The part of this site that I recommend is the Core Democratic Values and Beliefs Module located under Content and Resources. This module contains materials intended to teach a set of basic Core Democratic Values to students in grades 3. Lessons contained in this module explain basic human rights under a democratic society, the role of government carrying out its duty, and how citizens resolve conflict, make choices, and suffer consequences. Specific Core Democratic Values covered include free speech, assembly, property, equal protection, petition the government, common good, pursuit of happiness, and majority rule, assembly. There are 8 lessons in the module, and each takes a different approach to the topic of Core Democratic Values. "My Core Democratic Values Notebook" presents 6, liberty-focused lessons that are great for in-class viewing and discussion. "You Be The Judge is a threaded choose your own adventure type storybook that allows the viewer to make choices on actions to take based on rights and liberties, and then view the consequences of those choices. "A Freeway Story" is another animated story that mirrors the real events that took place in Oak P ark when a freeway was proposed to go through that town and what the citizens did to make the government consider alternatives.
This site contains many hands-on activities, classroom posters, and blank worksheets for building geographic and historical literacy in kids ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade. This site also contains references for great children’s books that can be used to build geographic and historical literacy as well. Finally, there are a number of quizzes that you can use to test your own knowledge on a subject before you teach it so you’ll know what to study up on! Although intended to be used as a resource for parents to use with their children, many of the activities are adaptable for the classroom or can be used as ideas for activities that you can give to kids’ parents for building geographic and historical literacy
This site is a kid-friendly site all about the Lewis and Clark expedition. It has an overview, maps of their trail, including cities and rivers crossed, games and activities for kids as well as lesson plan ideas for teachers to use with the site.
This site contains many interesting facts about various areas of American history. It covers areas such as technology in 1900, the U.S. Presidents, The Civil Rights Movement, information on women’s rights and inequity, flight, family trees, vacation spots in America, and the Future. This site contains several interactive elements, such as quizzes, games, and asking kids to share their predictions about the future, but a bulk of the site is focused on presenting information on history in a kid-friendly way.
This site has geography lesson plans sorted by grade level and geography standard. Also, the site contains a variety of activities along with an indication of the standards they fulfill as well as an explanation of how to differentiate by age level of learners. Finally, the site has a really great interactive museum for kids to explore themselves. The topics that kids can explore include Human Systems, Culture Goggles, The World in Spatial Terms, Places and Regions, and many more. This would be a great online activity for kids to do as a center or a scavenger hunt.
This part of the U.S. Census Site is designed especially for kids. It has a clickable map, where kids can click on individual states and find out demographic data. There is also an informational portion about the census and a great interactive quiz, differentiated by two levels, easy and hard, over various terms related to the census.
Ben’s [ Franklin] Guide gives information in a kid-friendly format to symbols of government, documents, citizenship, laws, federalism, elections, and more. It also has great interactive games for kids that are also printable. Games include, coloring the U.S. Flag, placing the states on a blank map, and more. There is also a glossary and reference to other web sites
This site has a range of information and materials for teachers to use to teach the Landmark Supreme Court Cases. The "Resources" section features basic building blocks such as background summaries and excerpts of opinions that can be used in multiple ways. The background summaries are differentiated by three different reading levels and contain useful comprehension questions. The "Activities" section contains a range of short activities and in-depth lessons that can be completed with students. The main types of activities used to reinforce concepts are: moot court activities, political cartoon analysis, continuum exercises, and website evaluations. Instructions for how to use each technique are provided as well. In addition, the site contains: diagrams of how the cases moved through the court system, excerpts from the majority (and where appropriate) the dissenting opinions, and links to the full text of the Supreme Court's decisions. Finally, for the teacher, this site contains an overview of important concepts necessary to teach the landmark cases.
This site is all about the constitution. It contains a full printable version of the Constitution. You can explore the constitution by cross-referencing it with other indexed topics such as affirmative action, or you can explore it by cross-referencing it with Supreme Court Cases. The site also gives an extensive overview of the constitution, including when it was written, information on the constitutional delegates, the documents that influenced on the founding forefathers, and more. There is also a great resource for teachers including standards based lesson plans on the Constitution, ideas for service learning projects, and great tips and resources for current events discussions. Also for students, there are games, puzzles, and quests all related to the Constitution.
This is a great site for teaching character education. There are several excellent components to this site, including an overview of what character education is and various approaches to teaching it from discussion to service learning. Then, there is a teaching guide, divided by grade level that is full of discussion questions, writing assignments, and other activities for a variety of topics, including controlling anger, responsibility, resolving conflicts, and much more. One of my favorite links on this site is the “Service Learning” link. It provides a manual for teachers with step by step instructions for creating and implementing service learning projects, a link to examples of some great service learning projects, and then a link to further service learning websites. Then, the site contains a resource for students to go to exercise their good character qualities that they have learned, including a place where they can find out about volunteering opportunities for example. Another great part of the website is a link called “School-to-Work: Ethics in the Workplace,” a place that gives various scenarios that you could do with your students that provide an opportunity to think about ethics. Finally, this site has a list of several web resources for teachers.
This is a site where kids can learn how to be good citizens! There is information on volunteering, getting to know the community, helping the homeless, etc. A very colorful and interesting site
This is a kids’ site all about recycling that is informative and interactive. it has a “city” where kids can click on different buildings to find out materials that can be recycled, materials that should not be thrown away, and in general, how to avoid throwing away things you don’t want anymore, such as clothes, CDs, and so on. The interactive portion of the site gives kids tasks to do while browsing the site (a great resource for ideas for teachers). The site also tells teachers how best to use the site with their class, including ideas for scavenger hunts, and information on how to play the interactive game: “The Dumping Game.”
This site has lessons for 32 trade books that incorporate economics and geography. Each lesson gives a brief annotation of the book, indicates the specific grade level, economic and geographic concepts, outcomes, and indicators, as well as a thoughtful application activity. These are very detailed, well-written lessons.
This site offers a range of posters designed to help elementary teachers teach economics concepts to kids. The best part of the site is the “literature connections” link, which lists various children’s books categorized by economics concepts topics, e.g. needs and wants, producers, consumers, opportunity cost, and many more. The site also gives a lesson to go along with each book, including great accompanying comprehension questions. While the posters are not free to download, I don’t think they are necessary to teach the lessons. Thumbnail sketches of the posters are provided that are a great starting point for a lesson. In addition, the site contains an orderable bingo game and activity cards to reinforce the economics concepts. Finally, a list of economics songs is given, broken down according to the concept it is meant to reinforce.
This site has information about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, including an introduction which gives general information about eh expedition, objects, which shows pictures and gives descriptions of actual artifacts found along the way, a map, which shows their route, and resources, which gives links to related sites pertaining to Lewis and Clark. This is a really neat site
This page from discoveryschool.com has a variety of lesson plans for social studies for all grades, including economics, geography, and American, ancient, and world history. The lesson plans are quite detailed, including objectives, procedures, assessment and even the social studies standards that are met through the lesson.
This is a large gateway site to many different lesson plans. You can search by topics: Art and Culture, Literature and Language Arts, Foreign language, and History and Social Studies. Then, you can narrow your search further by searching by subtopic and grade level.
This is a great site for kids! It has so much information that is kid-friendly on social studies topics, including geography, states, maps, and much more. It is also a great source for teachers. There are various printable worksheets on all sorts of topics, many to do with geography, from volcanoes to layers of the earth, to a variety of maps. There is also a great link to various ideas for crafts on a wide variety of topics. Some examples include Japanese crafts, various holidays, and various countries. Check this site out because I can’t begin to describe nearly all of the great resources that are here!
Little Explorers is a great site for kids to use. It’s an on-line picture dictionary. This would be good to use for kids to explore social studies terminology. It would also be a valuable resource for ESL kids because of the pictures accompanying the terms. Another great feature of this site is that it has English translation dictionaries from English to several languages, including Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and more. It also has dictionaries from other languages to English, including from German, Spanish, and more.
This site has a wonderful database full of lesson plans for social studies. To use it, simply click on social studies on the left, then choose your topic and grade level. Topic choices include anthropology, archaeology, various domains of civics, including government, community and citizenship, civil and human rights, and more.