341 history-culture-americas results | sort by:

Teaching World War I With The New York Times - New York Times/ Michael Gonchar
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
Take advantage of the free lesson plan for use in your World War I unit. Use this site to differentiate activities for students. Be sure to "mine" the links within the site for additional resources to add to your current lesson plans. Have students create online posters individually or together as a class using a tool such as Web Poster Wizard, reviewed here, or PicLits, reviewed here. Have students use Fakebook, reviewed here, to create a "fake" page similar in style to Facebook about a president, soldier, or family member during the time of World War I.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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TelevisionTunes - jayzoo.com
Grades
5 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Add a little interest to classroom games by downloading and including game show clips (music) as part of your activity. Play a sound clip as a classroom management cue, such as for circle reading time with young ones (turn up the speakers). Share with students as a resource for audio clips to add to offline podcasts and multimedia presentations for educational purposes.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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ThatQuiz - ThatQuiz
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Assign quizzes to students to complete on classroom computers or in computer labs. Modify activities for different student levels. Create a teacher account and modify quizzes to meet your own needs. Challenge students to complete quizzes and then increase the difficulty level. Share this link on your classroom website for students to access (to practice skills) while both in and out of the classroom. Consider allowing students to create quizzes for each other using a class account during review times or in small groups. It is much more fun to "study" by creating a quiz!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The American Civil War: Then and Now - The Guardian
Grades
6 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
It is tempting to scroll through the photographs quickly, but each deserves time for study and reflection. What is pictured in the original photograph? What is being communicated to the viewer? Challenge students to predict what the modern photo will show (you will need to hold the slider button to keep the photograph from changing automatically). What would Civil War-era soldiers think if they could see the modern photograph? What responsibility do we have to preserve sites like these in their original condition?Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Ancestral Pueblo People - National Park Service
Grades
6 to 10In the Classroom
Assign this activity in pairs when studying native Americans. The student challenges teach about the Ancestral Pueblo people and how they adapted to their harsh environment. The text portions might be challenging. Pair weak readers with a strong reader. Allow your ENL/ESL students to try using a text to speech program such as Text to Speech Reader, reviewed here, that will allow these students to follow the text as the article or passage is read to them.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Anne Frank House - The Anne Frank Stichting
Grades
5 to 12In the Classroom
Use your interactive whiteboard or projector to take your class on a virtual field trip to Amsterdam to visit the Secret Annex where they can realize what it was actually like for Anne Frank's family and four others to live inside a hidden space, with the constant fear of being discovered by the Nazis. Help the words in Anne's diary come alive by showing what the outside and inside of the building looked like, by viewing the painstaking ways that were taken to keep them safe, and by looking at the space where Anne ate, slept, and hung her pictures. Students will be more likely to relate to Anne as a real person, instead of a fictional character, and admire her optimism, courage, and resiliency. Use this to initiate journal entries for students to reflect on how they would handle two years of hiding and sharing a small space with others, as well as what they would do to remain positive, or use the online exhibit to shed some light on a dark period in history and to strengthen the personal account of the hiding period and the deportation to the camps. Assign class members to read about one of the house members or helpers to research, then have them write a diary (or blog entry) from that person's point of view. Assign teams to debate who was the most important member of the household or if this situation could take place in today's society. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through.Have groups compare two people they learned about using a tool such as the Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram (reviewed here). Create a class wiki for students to share their journal articles and respond to others.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Authentic History Center - Michael Barnes
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
The Authentic History Center is excellent for making history real. Share this information on your projector or interactive whiteboard (or speakers) during lessons on any time period of US History. Play Bing Crosby singing "God Bless America" to help students feel the pre-WWII era or nationalism. Make the Angry era of McCarthyism real by letting student explore the collection. Include this entire collection on your class web page for students to access both in and out of class. Use the sources for students to experience a multi-sensory tour of any era in U.S. history and create their own project about it incorporating the artifacts (with proper credit) and their own explanations. You could modify student learning by having students create a simple infographic sharing their findings using Livegap Chart, reviewed here. Or, have students create online posters about an era individually or together as a class using a tool such as Web Poster Wizard, reviewed here, or PicLits, reviewed here. Enhance learning by having students create timelines using Timeline JS, reviewed here. Timeline JS offers the option to upload and add photos, videos, audio, Tweets, and Google Maps making it interactive. If you participate in National History Day, this site is an outstanding start point. If you are the advisor for your high school play, bookmark this site as a great source for authentic era images and sounds. Need background music for a play (or video) set during WWII? Here it is!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Battle of Appomattox - Civil War Trust
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Use one of the short videos hosted by National Park Service historians to give students the context and details about the Battle of Appomattox and Lee's surrender. Share the video clips on your projector or interactive whiteboard. Some nice graphics give a summary of the battle, a map shows troop movements, and a gallery of photos can give students a look at the battlefield today.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Black Tapes - Paul Bae and Terry Miles
Grades
9 to 12In the Classroom
Using The Black Tapes podcast in the classroom can effectively engage students and enhance their learning experience. One approach to leveraging the podcasts is to assign specific episodes for critical listening and analysis. You can facilitate discussions, and students can post their responses to guided questions. Another activity is having students create their own short podcasts, drawing inspiration from the series. You can find various podcast creation options here. Students can then share their creations with the school community.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Center on Representative Government - Indiana University
Grades
7 to 12In the Classroom
Clearly, this is a great resource for those teaching civics or US government. These activities will also be useful to US History teachers, as the issues covered span important political eras. For example, there are activities related to women's suffrage, the child labor movement, the GI Bill and the development of the Interstate Highway system. Lesson plans range from those designed to cover several days, to short "Congressional moments" videos perfect for introducing a concept or sparking class discussion. A number of the lesson plans and activities are designed specifically for iPads. Of note also is the fact that the video clips on the site are not links to YouTube, so will not pose an access problem for school districts that block the site.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Civil War - SonOfTheSouth.net
Grades
7 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Bookmark this site as a wonderful resource for first-hand accounts and information about the Civil War. Share this site with students to use as a resource for Civil War material. Have students create an annotated image including text boxes and related links using a tool such as Thinglink, reviewed here to describe a person or event during the Civil War. Have students create maps about Civil War events using Have students collaborate to create maps using MapHub, reviewed here. Students can add icons, text, images, and location stops! This is also a good treasury of primary sources useful for History Day.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Digital Declaration of Independence - David McClure
Grades
7 to 12In the Classroom
Challenge students to find other paintings depicting famous events in United States (or another country). Have cooperative learning groups create a multimedia presentation about the paintings. Create fictitious blog entries from one character in a painting to another character within another painting at another famous event. What would John F. Kennedy write to Benjamin Franklin? Assign students different roles, i.e. founding fathers, and have them use the biographies on this site to allow them to research what their role was and what their beliefs were for a debate as to whether or not to sign the Declaration of Independence.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Exploration of Canada- Pathfinders and Passageways - National Library of Canada
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
This site is a little text heavy, but the information is all interesting and pertinent to a study of world explorers. Use this site as a point of reference when learning about the explorers who began to colonize our neighbor to the North. The site has a lot of information but would also be great for shorter investigations. Refer students to the site if working on research projects of papers about explorers. The information makes for a great jumping off point, and is reliable.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Gettysburg School Bus: The Civil War in the Classroom - Barbara Sanders
Grades
7 to 12In the Classroom
This is an excellent site to bookmark and save for many Civil War resources including lesson plans, first hand information on Gettysburg, and Civil War articles. Have students choose one of the blog posts from the site then create magazine covers of information included using Magazine Cover Maker reviewed here. Have students create an online presentation on the Battle of Gettysburg using Prezi (reviewed here). Use lesson plans included on the site to supplement your current Civil War unit.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Great Corn Adventure - University of Illinois
Grades
4 to 6In the Classroom
Save this site on classroom computers as a favorite. Allow students to access it as a learning center or station. This site is a great addition to any lesson about Native Americans, Geography of the corn belt, or the impact of globalization on the farming industry.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth - National Museum of African American History & Culture
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Have students express their understanding of Juneteenth through creative art by exploring the different themes of Juneteenth. After students explore the toolkit, they can create artwork or digital posters representing what Juneteenth means to them, using multimedia software like Canva, reviewed here. They can use the shareable graphics as inspiration. Facilitate a class discussion or debate on the impact of Juneteenth today, using resources from the toolkit to start the conversation. Students can use digital platforms like Padlet, reviewed here, to share their thoughts and responses. To enhance your study on black history, have your students research the history of Juneteenth and its significance. They can then create a digital timeline using a tool like MyLens, reviewed here showing key events that led up to Juneteenth and what happened afterward.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Historical Marker Database - HMdb.org
Grades
5 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use the Historical Marker Database to find information and locations of important events near your hometown or relating to any area of study. For example, choose the Civil Rights link to find markers noting important events related to Civil Rights. Then have students enhance their learning and create a simple infographic sharing their findings. Use Canva Infographic Maker, reviewed here. Have students create maps using Zeemaps, reviewed here. This tool allows students to create audio recordings AND choose a location on a map (Alaska) where the report takes place. Transform learning by having students create timelines of historic events near your school; use Timeline JS, reviewed here. Timeline JS also offers the option to upload and add photos, videos, audio, Tweets, and Google Maps making it interactive.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The History of Thanksgiving and its Celebrations - Holidays on the Net
Grades
K to 8This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Lead your students to this site filled with information. Research can determine the many myths and true information about Thanksgiving. Allow students to plan and make parts of their Thanksgiving feast. Find fun activities, crafts, decorations to make your celebration perfect with your students and families. Add at a center for timely fun information and research time. Link this to your class website or wiki for parent information and extensions at home.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Learning Network - The New York Times Company
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Share this site on your class web page for students to find challenges or activities. Substitute teachers can always find an appropriate current events or vocabulary/writing activity if there are no lesson plans. English, social studies, and gifted teachers will want to explore the many lesson ideas that draw on current news stories. Find many prompts for student opinion blogs at this site. If you are beginning the process of integrating technology, replace pen and paper and have students create blogs sharing their learning and understanding using Weebly, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America - Library of Congress
Grades
5 to 12In the Classroom
This site is a goldmine for finding music to accompany any American history unit! Use resources from the site as an anticipatory set or "activator" to introduce a unit or lesson on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Play music from the period you are studying during reading or research time. Allow students to explore the site on their own, and then share their findings with classmates. Have students create timelines (it can include text, images and collaboration) using Sutori, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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