1624 american-history results | sort by:
return to subject listingToday in History - Library of Congress
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
This site provides excellent historical research! For a classroom-ready activity each day to build understanding of historical events in the context of your students' prior knowledge, also try TeachersFirst's Dates That Matter. Include both links on your teacher web page for instant access by students both in and out of class. Maybe start a class wiki for your own "This Day" collection and assign student groups a day of their own. Add to it from year to year. Or have students write blog responses on class or individual blogs as they choose an event for the day from several sources and react to it.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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On This Day - New York Times
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Try this one for a daily "historical current events" sampling. Take advantage of the "ready to go" lesson plans, which include interactive features.This site also makes for decent research. For a classroom-ready activity each day to build understanding of historical events in the context of your students' prior knowledge, also try TeachersFirst's Dates That Matter. Include both links on your teacher web page for instant access by students both in and out of class. Maybe start a class wiki for your own "This Day" collection and assign student groups a day of their own. Add to it from year to year. Or have students write blog responses on class or individual blogs as they choose an event for the day from several sources and react to it.
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History Net - HistoryNet LLC,
Grades
6 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
This site would be ideal for research projects. For a classroom-ready activity each day to build understanding of historical events in the context of your students' prior knowledge, also try TeachersFirst's Dates That Matter. Include both links on your teacher web page for instant access by students both in and out of class. Maybe start a class wiki for your own "This Day" collection and assign student groups a day of their own. Add to it from year to year. Or have students write blog responses on class or individual blogs as they choose an event for the day from several sources and react to it.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Meet Amazing Americans - The Library of Congress
Grades
1 to 8In the Classroom
This site could be used throughout the entire year. Why not highlight a "hero of the week." Share the information on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students write diary entries, or replace paper and pen by asking students to write blogs sharing information learned using a site like Edublog, reviewed here, from the perspective of the "hero of the week." Use this Meeting Amazing Americans for individual research projects and have students create multimedia presentations about their hero: a Powerpoint, website, blog, wiki, or video. This site can be used in more than just social studies topics. Music classes, science classes, and gifted classes can also benefit from the many research areas.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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America's Story - Library of Congress
Grades
3 to 8In the Classroom
Interested students could spend hours on this site, so provide some specific directions for use before turning them loose! Use to supplement the study of a particular era in American history or as an enrichment activity.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Foreign Languages and Literature - MIT Open Courseware
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
AP history, language, and economics students may find MIT's online course materials useful. MIT has committed to putting its entire curriculum on the web, and these early offerings include syllabi, reading materials, and a variety of subject-specific class notes. Before using these pages, students and parents should all be aware of what Open Courseware is and is not. Teachers at smaller schools may welcome the availability of language alternatives. Teachers of gifted who are looking for acceleration options will also find these courses valuable, though you will need to develop a means of doing assessment if your students are to earn credit for them.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Anoka - Halloween Capital of the World - Anoka Halloween, Inc.
Grades
2 to 8In the Classroom
Use this site when studying community and culture. There are many sites that offer Halloween games and printables, but this site offers some real history - check it out! Why not have students research the history of Halloween (or another holiday) in your hometown. Do they have a parade? If so, when did it begin? What year did trick-or-treating begin in your hometown?Assign cooperative learning groups different cities throughout your state, and have students do "Halloween" (or holiday) research on that particular town. Have the groups create interactive presentations to share with the class. Try having students create videos using Typito (explained here), to share using TeacherTube (explained here).
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Who Were The Pilgrims - Plimoth Plantation
Grades
1 to 6On the right side of the website, there is a list of other relevant topics (Thanksgiving, Growing Food, What to Wear, Playing and Learning, What's for Dinner, and several others).
In the Classroom
A teacher could use this website for research projects. Incorporate this website into your lessons on pilgrims, the Mayflower, and Thanksgiving. Use this site to help prepare for Colonial Days at your school.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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ProProfs Quizmaker - Proprofs QuizSchool
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use this site to create online quizzes. Create a quiz as a review to share on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students take the quiz independently or in cooperative learning groups. Have students create their own quizzes to use for review or as a final project. Embed your quiz (or provide a link to it) on your class website.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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After the Deluge - Smith Magazine
Grades
6 to 12Warning: Be sure to PREVIEW each section before you show it to the class since there is some profanity in the speech of some characters.
In the Classroom
In light of the increase of hurricane activity, this is a wonderful resource to introduce this weather topic. Use it also in art class, graphic design, and with ESL and ELL students learning to tell stories. Use this site to introduce the world of graphic novels to students who are reluctant readers. Have your class make their own graphic novel about another catastrophic or historical event, either in groups or individually. Check with your administration to be sure it's OK to use this site at student computers since there are spaces for students to respond and also to submit their own work. If that's a problem, use it with your classroom computer and project the novel on the whiteboard (avoiding scenes with questionable vocabulary). Extend the lesson by having students create their own collaborative graphic account of a local history event or fictional tale in small groups.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events - D. Campbell
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
Students could use this as a starter for more specific comparisons, including specific regions or states. Use this site as an example for students to create a similar timeline for literature and art from other countries or other cultural areas, such as dance or theatre.Be sure to share the music and sounds from the time periods. Have students analyze what they think is the meaning behind the songs. What historical names do they hear? Then have students create their own songs or video clips about the literature and/or culture of that time period. Record and share the video clips on TeacherTube (explained here).
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Frederick County: A Crossroads of History - Maryland Public Television
Grades
K to 5There is a link for Web Links , these lead to other sites that provide research information. Some of the links include forums, so watch students carefully.
In the Classroom
If you are teaching about the history of Maryland, War of 1812, Revolutionary War, Underground Railroad, or the Civil War, check out the lesson plans available at this website. The printable pages and online student activities offer excellent supplementary lesson ideas.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Story of Anne Arundel County - Maryland Public Television
Grades
4 to 8In the Classroom
Use this site for individual research projects about the eight famous places listed at this site. Assign cooperative learning groups to explore the sites together. Use the link for Shady Side to introduce peninsulas to your students. "Take" your students to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis without leaving school.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Pathways to Freedom: Maryland & The Underground Railroad - Maryland Public Television
Grades
3 to 9In the Classroom
Start your exploration at the link for teachers Classroom Resources. The lesson plans (which include standards) are ready to go and easy to use. Share the video clips on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Use this site for research projects. Have students write fictitious blog posts using Telegra.ph, reviewed here, pretending they are traveling the Underground Railroad. With Telegra.ph you just click on an icon to upload images from your computer, add a YouTube or Vimeo, or Twitter links. This blog creator requires no registration.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Web Poster Wizard - 4Teachers.org
Grades
K to 12Plan to spend some time reading through the directions and trying out this tool before you assign it to students. Teachers and students must register and login each time they use this tool. Students can share the URL for their posters with grandparents or parents to show off their good work!
Students will need to know how to locate and upload a file for an image (such as a digital picture) to place it in their poster. If you allow them to use images from the web, the tool asks them to give information on their image source, as well (hooray for ethical use of the Internet!). If you use digital pictures of students, be SURE that you do NOT use full names on the site. You should get parent permission for uploading any student images, even if anonymous.
This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Some uses for this simple tool: book reports (take a digital photo of the book cover), biographical posters of famous people (images from the web), "all about me" posters, posters about community members such as veterans of World War II whom students interview and photograph, author posters, fictitious character studies, science posters on processes or terms with accompanying digital pictures to illustrate, etc. The possibilities are endless. Once students know the tool, they can use it over and over.Teachers, make sure you select the archive option to keep student projects live online for more than a month. Use the Teacher Feature option to create one web page of your class' archived projects. You will want to put your created web page link prominently on your class homepage.
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Picasso - Maryland Electronic Fieldtrips - Thinkport
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Start out at the "for educators" link for some great ideas to create an interdisciplinary lesson using Picasso in art, social studies, language arts, or math class. Use this site for research projects. In art class, use your interactive whiteboard or projector to show students an up close look at several of Picasso's paintings. Analyze and notate the paintings' composition using the whiteboard tools!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Food Fight - Tourist Pictures
Grades
9 to 12In the Classroom
The film is embedded in the site as a link to YouTube, so systems that block YouTube access may not be able to access this without a work-around.While there is no real content to this site other than the film itself, it would be a great addition to a modern U.S. history course or a discussion of current world politics. However, teachers will need to set the context carefully and provide discussion questions afterwards. Watching pretzels and bratwurst mow down a line of matzo, or hamburgers flattening a hundred sushi will spark laughter; it is our responsibility to translate that into a discussion of the Holocaust or the use of atomic weapons. Younger students will just giggle, but older students, with prodding, will find the film thought provoking. You might want to use it mid-unit after mastering the basic facts of WWII so you can raise the level of discussion to a more nuanced approach.
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Google Lit Trips - Google Earth
Grades
3 to 12"Lit trips" can be reviewed by users so teachers can see comments left by other users. This site uses Google Earth which must be downloaded first. Find full info on Google Earth in the TeachersFirst review, including the link to download.
In the Classroom
Each "lit trip" is extensively annotated and linked to further content, making this an incredibly rich resource for teachers to use in conjunction with teaching works of literature. Students can see graphically the travels of such characters as the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath , or Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey . Using these lit trips on an interactive whiteboard or projector will greatly enhance a class study of the associated work of literature. Alternatively, students might be encouraged to explore these lit trips independently, at home, or in a computer lab, so they can follow links that are of particular individual interest. As a really ambitious project, make it a class task to create a lit trip for a work of literature you are studying, assigning student groups to choose locations and create the placemarkers, then submit it to the Lit Trips site.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Ben's Guide to U.S. Government - Government Printing Office
Grades
1 to 12In the Classroom
With younger grades, use an interactive whiteboard or projector to learn the states' locations with the entire group. This simple site would be great to use in your computer center for individual learning or for some indoor recess enrichment fun. Secondary teachers looking for more than the basics will want to supplement this site with other resources. There is a link for parents and teachers, be sure to take a look!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Map Collections Home Page - Library of Congress
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Teachers with interactive whiteboards or projectors will find these maps a natural companion to lessons involving history, geography, and cultural changes. Sometimes seeing a map drawn at the same time as the event under discussion can lend a whole new understanding of the culture of the people being studied. It's far more dramatic to imagine sailing into the unknown on a voyage of discovery while you look at the only maps available to those aboard.Be sure to have students use the whiteboard tools to draw in their own "corrections" or annotations showing the movement of people or strategies used in battles. Since thee resources are in the public domain, you are allowed to copy them into your whiteboard software and keep the student annotations atop the maps, as well. The maps also make good visuals for "mock" blog entries by historical figures!
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