Group items tagged

War rations is a concept that is difficult for students to understand. This site uses a painting of people shopping at a grocery store during WWII and makes it interactive. Visitors to the site can examine the picture and click on details to learn more about what is happening in the photo. For instance, it shows pictures and explainations of actual ration booklets, propaganda, posters, grocery prices, etc. There are also nice "Did you know" buttons to learn more and all the primary sources can be downloaded and printed as PDF's.

This site is part of the Eisenhower Presidential Library. It would be extremely useful for civil rights units. This is a nice collection of some of Eisenhower's most important correspondence during the Little Rock High School integration crisis. It is also neat to read them because they are scans of the actual typed documents and not just transcriptions. It seems more authentic when students can see the real thing. His notes, diaries, telegrams, letters and press releases really help to show how Eisenhower handled the situation. (Note: There is even an exchange of letters between Jackie Robinson and the president in which they discuss how blacks need to be patient for civil rights)

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 offers readers a chance to hear the voices of people the history textbooks have traditionally left out. Interviews done in the 1930's with former slaves are transcribed on this site, some with photographs of the former slave included. The transcripts are difficult to read because of dialect, racial slurs, and some troubling content. With teacher assistance, though, I think these transcripts could help students better understand life for slaves in our country's history.

This site provides first-person accounts from former slaves. I have actually used this site in American Literature to show students what slaves went through. It gives them a voice and students have really connected with the slaves' stories. Students can find lots of material about slavery, but the first-person accounts make it much more personal.

This site has over 600 primary source documents from the time of Christopher Columbus to the Civil War. This would connect with 5th grade curriculum about the American Revolution and Native Americans. This would be a great resource to introduce to teachers and students.

This is an amazing site with hundreds of annotated American political documents.  There are items written by Christopher Columbus, Cotton Mather, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and William Bradford.  This site would be very useful to a classroom teacher to show the actual documents that are discussed in a textbook. 

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 great site allows teachers to visit work of famous artists right in their classrooms. One of my favorite exhibits is that of artist Norman Rockwell showing a slideshow of his most popular pieces of work.

I thought this video might be helpful to show students more about using search engines and how to best utilize them to get information. When looking for primary or government docuements, I thought this video could be a starting point for students to start their research. It's very simple explanation for students.

This site has an abundance of information related to most classroom uses. It has information on English, math, science, geography, history, art etc. There are short power points to show to students, worksheets and many other ways to use this site. It will be helpful to teacher in more than one area.

Wow! This site has a wealth of sources for the science teacher looking for great science projects, cool things to do with kids in agriculture, and podcasting of neat experiments. There is even something for the counselors helping students that want a career in the sciences.

This is a site for science as it relates to agriculture. It has experiments and activities. There are videos and slide shows to watch on a variety of topics. If you are studying careers, there is a section on science jobs related to agriculture. There are also links to various ag related sites.

This site has been of interest to every teacher I tell about it. It contains virtual trips of a large variety of books for all age groups. You need google maps to use this site as it is map based. Takes books to where they take place and shows you on the map or with photos of what the characters would see. A new way to look at books.

This is a great website for kids to learn about our government. It contains theme units (grade level specific) students can access. In each unit are interactive games and slide shows students can view to learn more about our nation/government. My students love to visit this site.

This site caught my attention because the letters are from an Iowa soldier. He was actually from my grandmother's home town. The site shows pictures of the soldier and the women he was sending them to. It has the original letters along with lesson plan ideas for teachers how to use them with a class.

This site has 2 of the items on the NeSA-Reading test in April. This site will have videos that have assignment that you can save and modify to your needs.

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.

Learn what causes weather on Web Weather for kids. This site has activities, games, stories, and numerous ways to explain our unpredictable weather to kids. This site can be used by teachers to help explain weather concepts or show the concept in action.

Great site to build skills in math. This tool is easy to access and have kids use. It is easy to show skills such as probability and graphing.

National Center for Education Statistics Dare to Compare allows students to check what they know about subjects (social studies, math, science) compared with other US and international students from a 600+ question database. The "Create A Graph" page is a useful interactive tool for teaching ways to communicate statistics.