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Resources for Social Studies Teacher


This site is an interactive place for everyone interested or involved in the NC 1:1 learning collaborative. Listed below you will find postings about resources specific to Social Studies teachers.

Social Studies Resources and Discussion:

 

Friday Institute Social Studies Workshop Wikispace

Link: http://1to1socialstudies.wikispaces.com/

This Wiki was created during the 1:1 Social Studies Workshop on October 15-16.  Included are online resources and materials created by participants of the workshop.

Link: http://plantationletters.com/teaching.html

This teaching resource contains digitized primary source letters from the Cameron Family Papers extracted from the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. The letters are associated with antebellum plantation life.

They also have lessons primarily for social studies and language arts, with plans to add more soon. Lessons can be found in the forum.

Link: http://www.free.ed.gov/

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) provides hundreds of resources on Art and Music, Language Arts, Math, Science, World Studies, U.S. History, and Health and Physical Education. Maintained by the U.S. Department of Education, this site is continually updated by the many contributing federal agency partner organizations.

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Best of History Web Sites

Link: http://www.besthistorysites.net/

Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.

Link: http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/

C-Span Classroom provides information and resources to assist Civics and U.S. Government teachers.  C-SPAN Classroom offers current, relevant standards-based video clips organized under six topic headings:  Principles of Government, U.S. Constitution, Legislative Branch, Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, and Political Participation. C-SPAN Classroom also offers other resources, such as PDFs and links, designed to enhance the teaching of these subjects.

 

Link: http://www.edc.org/CCT/PMA/

Featuring primary documents from the Library of Congress’ American Memory archives, this site provides web activities designed to deepen students’ understanding of topics in the study of modern America 1880-1920 by building skills in analyzing primary sources.

National Geographic Expeditions

Link: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/

National Geographic’s resources include online and offline standards based lessons and activities, hundreds of maps and map making resources, Xpedition hall, a virtual museum, and geography news.

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Center for Teaching History with Technology

Link: http://thwt.org/


The Center for Teaching History with Technology is an expansive portal for information on how to get started teaching with technology and how to incorporate various technology tools into your classroom. The site includes lesson plans, activities, video tutorials, powerpoint, podcasts, blogs, wikis, virtual tours, video streaming, webquests and links to even more resources.

SAS Curriculum Pathways

LINK: SAS Curriculum Pathways
The site offers standards-based lessons and resources that help to integrate technology into the curriculum. The materials are interactive, target higher-order thinking skills, and differentiated for varied learning styles.

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American Memory: Digital Library from the Library of Congress

LINK: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Background
During a workshop for social studies teachers at the Friday Institute in November, 2007, Dr. John Lee presented this website as a tool for use in social studies classrooms. A brief overview, introductory activities, and additional resource links from this workshop are listed below.

Overview
American Memory is the national digital library of the Library of Congress. It provides a one-stop point of online access to tens of millions documents in over 135 collections focused on thousands of potentially researchable topics. As they state on their site:

“American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning. “

Introductory Activities
During a workshop for social studies teachers at the Friday Institute, Dr. John Lee presented two example activities to demonstrate the use of american memory as a classroom tool. These introductory activities are listed below:

Activity 1
1. Access the American Memory site and browse to collection titled “Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film
2. Find at least one film, watch and analyze the content of the film using Film Analysis Framework from http://www.Folkstreams.net

Activity 2
1. Either search or navigate to the following document: a letter from George Washington to Bushrod Washington, January 15, 1783.
2. You will find two versions of this letter. Describe the differences
3. Analyze the letter using the SCIM-C framework from Hicks, Doolittle, and Ewing at http://www.historicalinquiry.com

Additional resources
- http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/
- http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/
- http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu
- https://chnm.gmu.edu/
- http://historymatters.gmu.edu/
- http://www.edc.org/CCT/PMA/
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/

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Google Earth

Background
During a workshop for social studies teachers at the Friday Institute in November, 2007, Dr. John Lee presented this software as a tool for use in social studies classrooms. A brief overview, the link to download the software, and additional resource links from this workshop are listed below.

Software Overview
Google Earth is a software application that is freely available for download at http://earth.google.com/index.html. It enables users to interact with global satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and a variety of spatial data layers on a 2-dimensional map base.  Layers within google earth can be turned on to highlight everything from historical maps to projected global warming effects to population, economic and literacy data from around the world.  These cross-curricular make it an cool tool for use in a variety of classes.

Additional resources
- http://www.geocaching.com/
- http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/gitan/
- http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine/
- http://www.davidrumsey.com/
- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/texas.html

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