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This site was developed by a teacher in responce to budget cuts. It is geared to elementary students and contains information on various types of animal farming. NOTE: Explore this site before using it in class, as some links seem to be broken, including teacher resources.

This website offers powerful images touching on current events from around the world. While the text would be challenging for most of my elementary students; I think the images are so telling that they would be a useful tool to teach students how to read pictures and some other powerful visual and media literacy skills.

This is a great site for upper elementary through high school. There are numerous learning experiences from exploring a town which has been cleaned up, to learning to help the city budget enough to follow through with their plans of cleaning up the environment. There are activity areas as well as teacher information sections. I will be sharing this with the middle school science teachers I know.

The National Archives' digital classroom for using primary sources. Activities and training for students and teachers. Link to another site for using primary sources, Docs Teach.

The exhibits on this site were awesome! From the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence to the Deadly Influenza Virus or Electing a President and Democracy; these were just a few among many that met indicators on my specific grade level, so I'm sure others would work for different elementary grades. My favorite part was the Eyewitness exhibit. It has links to all important moments in US History and has video, songs, and voice recordings to bring students into that very moment in time.

This site has links to information on some of the states. Nebraska is one of the states with a link and there is a wide variety of information included about the state.

While I directed my search to Nebraska once on this site, many of the other state sites that I checked out were really cool. I imagine upper elementary would benefit from this site for projects, but I could utilize this site in my Flat Stanley project. Flat Stanley is sent to my student's families in other states (countries) and we compare and contrast the physical geography, natural resources and climate. This site would allow me to do that while showing the students some specific historical/cultural aspects not experienced through typical research.

This website for kids is develped by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It is an award winning website with the character Energy Ant. Learn all about energy, its sources, uses, how to save energy, history with information rich timeline, calculators and tools for converting energy, measuring etc., games and activities, glossary and teacher section. Text formatted.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration provides this "Energy Kids" site. It defines energy in lots of different ways. It compares renewable and nonrenewable sources as well as potential and kinetic energy. It talks about different types of energy sources, the history of energy and even provides games and activities for kids.

This website, created by the US Dept of Energy's Information Administration, answers students' questions about energy -- from what is energy to the history of energy to saving energy. Website provides teachers with lesson plans, teacher guides, virtual field trips, energy career information. All teacher information is categorized by student age group.

This is a fantastic place to go for elementary classrooms. There are virtual tours for students to view on a wide variety of topics. The universe tour fits perfectly into our study of the planets.

Encourages/motivates eating healthy and being active. Fun resources for children/parents for learning about and tracking eating/exercise habits. Food/exercise pyramid. Elementary grades.

This site contains a wealth of resources for teachers. They have primary source sets that include teacher resource booklets and lesson plans. One of the sets I found useful was one on the Constitution that included newspaper articles and original documents that trace the drafting and adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This set would be useful for all grade levels for Constitution day materials in September. There was also an interesting primary source set on Thanksgiving that had paintings and photographs showing historical perspectives on American Thanksgiving traditions.

While the Library of Congress website is vast, I found the Classroom Resources section under the Teachers heading to be beneficial for my current position as a third grade classroom teacher; although many of the items I saw could be used at any elementary grade level. I found the Primary Sources by State and Immigration Challenges to be beneficial to my current unit in my district's SS program. The Thanksgiving link would be interesting for the students to see and discover things they didn't know before celebrating this holiday. I'll definitely use this site with my students, because it goes so well with what we're studying. Plus, it creates a more 'real' experience than their textbook allows.

This site explains disasters of all kids. It focuses on weather. hiss site would be useful when teaching weather and getting kids to understand the different aspects of weather. It's also good to know about the different kinds of disasters so you can be prepared! Kids love learning about different disasters they are unfamiliar with.

This site gives information about Federal Emergency Management Agency. It provides links to games and interactive sites that help kids understand the agency, what it does, types of weather emergencies and how to be prepared for weather emergencies. This would be a good addition/extension to a weather unit in 3rd-5th science curriculum.

An animated site geared toward elementary students with information on FEMA. Includes follow up quizzes, template for planning family disaster drills and an interactive map showing current FEMA efforts in U. S. disaster areas. Good companion to current events and science.

This site has almost anything one would want having to do with the United States government. It is one of the most extensive sites relating to the U.S. government. It has information for students as low as kindergarten and as high as seniors. It seems rare to find a site that truely covers this range of ages as well as this one does. For the elementary teacher and the high school history teacher this will be a helpful site to use.

A subsearch of National Geographic. If you are looking for primary source photographs, these are beautiful. They have a direct link for downloading photos to Diigo. Many categories of photos. This particular site on rainforests would be useful to elementary school students doing research on environments, animal habitats, etc.

This patent drawing by Eli Whitney for his cotton gin could be used at the elementary level when taking about the impact of Whitney's invention, or at the senior high level when discussing patent applications.

This website is another portal with many links that are organized very well. This website has 2 links that I would use most often and they are the Ben's Guide to the Government link, which is a very kid-friendly website that talks about the U.S. government, and it has a link to primary early government documents like the Constitution and Bill of Rights, etc. This site may not be as useful in the elementary grades as it would in high school, but the links I mentioned above would be good for 5th and 6th grade students.

Facts about states presented in kid friendly format, information is up-to-date, would be a nice companion piece for states research done in fourth grade. Consider pulling data from this site to use in making charts and graphs (fifth grade). Lincoln Public Schools - social studies - U.S. Regions - grade 4 * Regions are composed of states with capitals * Each region has unique characteristics: geography, climate, food sources; plants and animals; people and culture, landmarks

This site, sponsored by the US Census Bureau, introduces elementary students to basic information gathered in the US Census. The student clicks on a state and is given information about that specific state, including population, age of residents, the number of households, and the urban and rural populations. Information is offered for the 1990 and 2000 census, so students can compare figures.

This drawing submitted by Eli Whitney for his cotton gin patent application could be used at the elementary level when discussing Whitney's invention and its impact. Students will be able to see what a cotton gin looks like and how it operates. This document could also be used at the senior high level when discussing patent applications.

This site has five links to different legislation in regards to segregation. It also has lots of teacher sources; literacy strategies, images of documents, vocabulary lists, and rubrics. This site would be perfect for intermediate elementary students and their teachers.

This site is sponsored by the Library of Congress. The sites focus is the Declaration of Independence and how to use use it with elementary age students. It gives an example lesson plan with it's focus on identifying, examining and evaluating.

This Library of Congress site would be fun to use as a bell work activity in upper elementary school. Each day a student could pick one event from "today in history" to share with the class. Informative with pictures!

Today in History is part of the Library of Congress' American Memory project. As the title implies, the site pulls a signicant event in history, reports about it and shows primary sources -- photos and documents -- attached to the event. The writers generally pick one or two topics for the day and elaborate on those. Excellent for upper grades.

This site is a WEALTH of information on the history of the United States. It includes letters, documents, photos, audio and video that are all in the public domain (and there fore also legal to use) since they are all owned by the U.S. government. Using the search box will yield many results. My favorite search on this site is to find primary sources about the great depression. A search tip: be sure to click "gallery view" when you look at your search results. It helps you know what type of source you are looking at.

search: Oregon Trail first person accounts and maps that help to explain trails and settlements Lincoln Public - grade 4 - Social Studies * Major rivers and terrain determined trail paths and settlement sites * Motivation varied (Oregon = land, California = gold, Mormon = religious freedom)

There are some great sites at this source. Their topics run from Women's history to Native American history. There are even maps. This would be a big help for upper elementary to 12th grade.