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History lessons addressing topics through the lens of Zinn's A People's History of the United States. useful search tools to find materials based on time period or subject matter streamline research time and make the site very useful.

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On what's wrong with our education system 

Starter and Closure ideas via AP Lit teacher

I start my English classes with "Observations". Students can state anything they have observed since the last class (as long as it's appropriate). We then explore how the observation can be used in writing. Not just as plot/narrative, but any aspect of English- as a metaphor, a character note- whatever we want to emphasize, and that the observation suggests. It not only gets kids past writer's block, but it promotes a mindset of finding the unique in the ordinary.

I define a rule as what you enforce every time it's broken. Platitudes cannot be enforced because there is no line to cross, there's nothing predictable for students to understand, and they're too vague to be useful. In essence, these clumps allow teachers to enforce anything whenever they want under any conditions they chose. It's a get into jail free card. Rules aren't reduced by clumping them -- they are only hidden from students. Often, the only way students can find the real lines is by crossing them. This encourages rule breaking rather than stopping it.

I find, however, that if you inundate students with rules and consequences, especially when they are the same rules every time, students view these as your expectations of their behavior. When they believe you expect the worst from them, they will rise to that expectation. Many rules teachers make are actually procedures, as defined by Henry Wong. If we teach procedures instead, and simply reteach the procedure every time it is not followed, they eventually get tired of being retaught the procedure and just do it. I think what some in education forget is that students, no matter what age, expect and deserve respect, too. If we consistently offer respect and dignity, even when we aren't receiving it in return, the rest of the class notices and responds in return. There need to be some rules that are clearly stated with real enforceable consequences. They need to be only a few and very important. Every professional work place has a few. But we also need to send the clear message that school, as preparing them for the workplace that will not have a100 page rule book, is where we are showing them a model of behavior that is *implicitly* expected in every segment of society.

"Because so many educators have come to believe the myth of "the fewer rules, the better" (which I was taught in my teacher training program), they have developed what I call deception clumps. They throw as many rules as possible into a respectably titled non-communicative clump: "

"Playtime, or break, periods can offer physical, cognitive, social and emotional benefits to primary school children, but those benefits are tied closely to the quality of the playground experience. Playground safety, access to play equipment, peer conflict resolution and quality engagement between adults and students are among the factors that contribute to a quality recess experience, new research from Oregon State University (USA) shows."

A simple but useful simulation of how air pressure in effected by space and temperature. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science