Social Studies

These lessons are very detailed and flexible. Can be used for a single class period or over several periods. Helpful explanation of historical and visual culture background of images used. Links to high quality additional resources.

Primary source visual media depicted include photographs, drawings, paintings, political cartoons, print media, statuary, furniture, collectibles. Supplemented with written explanations for context and quotes from primary source written documents.

Great initial resources for a geography class. Lots of definitions and easy explanations.

Teachers can find lots and lots of printer friendly maps to use in their classrooms.

You can customize a lesson with historical thinking strategies by building interactive activities.

Thematic eras can help you find documents in U.S. history quickly.

This site includes secondary source information on several events that are important in Western Civilization.

This site does not include information from East Asia, so it couldn't be used a world history course.

Great source for lesson plans, primary sources, bibliographies and web casts to supplement teaching about the documents governing the United States.

The drafts featured on this site would be great to illustrate the points of compromise negotiated by the Founding Fathers and to get students to think about how the documents and ultimately, our country's governing principles, might have turned out differently.

This site also features helpful teacher training materials for how to evaluate and utilize primary sources.

Great general resource for teachers who are looking for options to enhance their geography classes.  Online resources at reliable government websites to help augment lessons and skills.

I would use this site as a resource for my students to do research for themselves.  I would also use some of the sites as alternate assignments for students.

This site is an awesome resource for social studies teachers looking for internet resources to give their kids.  It is both credible and provides general enough resources that allow them to use it for all lessons.

Herbert Block's bio is very impressive, and this section could be used as a resource for students were you to introduce the analysis of political cartoons as a strategy

Herbert Block's own essay "The Cartoon" on the role political cartoons play in our view of history and current events, could also be an invaluable material source for any lesson plan on the analysis of political cartoons.

The Library of Congress organized these exhibits, centering on different points in history (and Herblock's career), thereby making it easier to search for a specific cartoon, as well as some ideas for how one might use it in the classroom.

This article and lesson plan was created by two professors (a secondary social studies prof and a history prof) at Ball State University. It was published in The Magazine of History, a publication of the Organization of American Historians. Each edition of the magazine includes a section on educational materials. Often they include websites that are helpful for teachers and students.

The first part of this website is a brief summary of important themes of American history between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century. The second half of the page is a 5 lesson plans on the time period. Each of the lesson plans is designed for a different multiple intelligence.

The mathematical intelligence lesson asks students to compare rents charged to white and black tenants in the late 20th century. This reflects the move to the cities as well as racial discrimination. The information on rents comes from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Live. Like all the other lesson plans offered, they include procedures, handouts, and possible assessment questions. This is a great resource for teachers who are looking for fresh ideas and methods of incorporating MI into their classrooms.

The lesson plan gets its direct information from a document that was used in the Nixon hearings

Important that the writer of this lesson suggests that students will need prior knowledge on Watergate

The lesson uses primary source documents which help students learn to read with a historical eye. 

So for the first half of my time at McKinley we had a class called Global Perspectives and nobody knew what we were supposed to teach because it was brand new. My teacher thought it was a pain but I thought it was such a cool opportunity to have a lot of teacher freedom. They had a book that taught them about different contemporary issues around the world but it was really negative. So in order to balance out some of that negativity, particularly regarding developing countries, I think it would be cool to choose a cool travel book about some of the places. Especially if you were in a school that had a English/Social Studies department relationship. Some of the books wouldn't be very good to use but out of 50 titles, there were a few that sparked my interest.

This is one that sparked my interest because it is written by a historian. I think what he did was so cool. He journeyed down the Yangtze river and tied the past and present, which is the only way to truly understand a sense of place and cultures.

The current feature lesson plan provides teachers with many examples of how to teach their students about a particular period in history, an event, or a person/group of people.

It is great that the National Park Service organizes their lesson plans and follows the National Standards for 5-12 Social Studies so teachers can see how it fits into the objectives they are required to follow over the course of the semester/year.