Social Studies

The Discovery Education website provides some really great resources for students and teachers. It can provide a nice jumping off point for one's own lessons and activities.

I love all the lesson plans. You're totally right that the plans may need some tweaking, but it's a great place to get ideas.

This website, made at the turn of the millennium, goes through the major themes of the past millennium, and organizes them based on timeline, location, major players, popular food, and basic overview.

I used this site with my students in our study of diamonds and their origins. It's great interactive site that allows students to not only see the countries discussed on a map but also take a look at information on that particular country.

This is the Frontline Video that explores how to teach racism/prejudice prevention.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute created this site on letters written during war. You can view copies of original letters written by soldiers, generals, presidents, and family members during conflicts from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War. But wait, there's more: actors read the letters aloud while you read along. They have organized the letters by five different themes: Enlisting, Comforts of Home, Love, Combat, and The End of War. Each theme includes letters from all different eras of US history.

One of my favorite topics to teach is the Women's Suffrage Movement and Alice Paul - I just found out that this museum is right here and full of resources and opportunities for out students to learn about the movement hands-on.

Personal stories aka Primary sources from middle and high school students who have visited various countries or experienced new cultures.

Dave's ESL Cafe includes a wide selection of strategies, lesson plans, and tools for teaching English language learners. There is a section for teachers as well as a section for students themselves.

BrainPOP is an interactive instructional tool that uses animated characters, Tim & Moby to introduce and illustrate content material for social studies, math, science, English, arts, health and technology. The interactive resources include quizzes, movies, timelines, and activity pages. Other resources include lesson plans, classroom tools, curriculum calendars, research and much more. Some of what they offer is free. Unfortunately, there is an annual fee for most of their material. My practicum school uses this program extensively. The students really like using this program and actively engage in the material. At the moment, BrainPOP is featuring a segment on "American Indians" and "Digital Citizenship." If you go to this location, you will find a free movie on the civil war. http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/freemovies/civilwar/

Rethinking Schools is an organization committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race. Rethinking Schools tries to balance classroom practice and educational theory. It is an activist publication, with articles written by and for teachers, parents, and students. It also addresses key policy issues, such as vouchers and marketplace-oriented reforms, funding equity, and school-to-work.

This is my go-to site! Thanks for posting it!

Economic history data sets and conversion tools

This is a fun website which gives a comprehensive list of major events that happened on the current date.

C-SPAN's Tocquville page (as promised). Passages from "Democracy in America," a map of the route he traveled, references to his work, lesson plans and more!!

This site was designed to provide resources for teaching landmark supreme court cases. It is orgnanized by cases or concepts. One can also find a variety of applicable activities for the classroom.

This website highlights landmark Supreme Court cases and includes short activities that can be used by teachers to help their students understand them.

This site provides songs that can be included in history teaching units.

This is unbelievable! I still remember the song we did in elementary school called "Fifty Nifty United States." I am definitely going to use this. They are totally silly but that is why they will remember them.

Historical and contemporary currency converter

First Year Teacher Help