Group items tagged

"This site lets you use a Bookworm database to read Obama's State of the Union in the context of all the other State of the Union messages given by American presidents. For any word in the message, just click on the text: the word will turn red. If you want to search a two-word phrase, just highlight both words. (You can't search for phrases longer than two words)."

"Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data-remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century." Large Database of Interactive historical maps

"The root cause of the American Civil War is perhaps the most controversial topic in American history. Even before the war was over, scholars in the North and South began to analyze and interpret the reasons behind the bloodshed." Another interesting problem that Voyant (and other data viz/textual analysis tools) could help us solve. Provide students with a little background and then give them the Articles of Secession for a variety of states. Have them analyze/interpret the overall reasons for Secession based on what they uncover.

"Smart Galleries℠ that focus students, teachers and parents on enrichment topics while also supporting Common Core State Standards in Language Arts."

"This map, made with data from the 1870 census, shows rates of wealth per capita in the settled United States. The scale stretches from white-"under $175 per capita"-to dark orange-"$1300 and over." (In today's terms, that range of per capita net worth would be $3,125 to $23,214.29.)" Possible uses when teaching Reconstruction

"These maps, published in 1932 in the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States and available through the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, illustrate how arduous travel was in the country's early history. In 1800, a journey from New York to Chicago would have taken an intrepid traveler roughly six weeks; travel times beyond the Mississippi River aren't even charted. Three decades later, the trip dropped to three weeks in length and by the mid-19th century, the New York-Chicago journey via railroad took two days. And the introduction of regional airlines in the 1920s made it possible to travel 1,000 or more miles in a single day." Possible applications for Westward Expansion

How can a game help students develop mathematical habits of mind? "Then we talked about the game for a bit, and discussed the "habits of mind" they had employed to figure out the game - noticing and wondering, guessing and checking, persevering, struggling productively, learning from mistakes without worrying about making mistakes (since they knew the only way they were going to make progress was to make mistakes and learn from them), and working together. We talked about how these skills are as important as any content they learn in their school classes, and how they can use those skills to make progress on math problems they're not sure how to solve. In fact, much of the math programming we did the rest of the year employed huge doses of Noticing and Wondering and generating ideas about math situations, or scenarios (a math problem with no stated question). Anecdotal reports suggest that by the end of the year, most of the students felt pretty confident that they could generate ideas about most math situations we handed them. Big win!"

"The following Problem Based Learning (PrBL) curriculum maps are based on the Math Common Core State Standards and the associated scope and sequences. The problems and tasks have been scoured from thoughtful math bloggers who have advanced our practice by posting their materials online." This is an incredible accumulation of lessons, tasks, and assessments that address the mathematical standards for the common core. Although it might take some time to align our specific SOL strands and content with the appropriate common core tags, these curriculum maps are still worth scouring and using, as there is a TON of good stuff here. This also might be a decent bookmark in case Virgina ever goes to the Common Core…