History Lessons: Teaching, Learning, and Testing in U.S. High School Classrooms

Wheat Ridge High School history teacher Stephanie Rossi leads a Rossi has taught Advanced Placement U.S. history for more than a decade. If you're looking for a history lesson, look no further than Stephanie Rossi's classroom. are distracting them and they want help in learning some coping skills.
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That's the premise of the site. Animated musical educational short films that aired during the Saturday morning children's programming on the U. The topics covered included grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. This site has indexed over 33, educational videos from YouTube and placed them into a directory of over 3, categories.

A curated collection of educational videos from sources ranging from Sesame Street to Harvard. Created by YouTube itself. Containing a large collection of educational materials, this newish service also gives teachers and administrators the ability to filter out everything but their own selections from YouTube. In other words, you can separate the wheat from the chaff. Get more details here. It has partnered with many major museums and arts institutions. Created by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this site offers theme-based activities in visual arts, language arts, history and social studies.

Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel: Using buttons in the lower left screen, you can move around the room and zoom in on the paintings, including those on the ceiling. Provides teachers and students free maps of Europe, Asia, the U. Includes data on more than indicators. Includes interactive visualizations like rankings, graphs and maps. All information can be exported and embedded onto the web. Offers copious information about the fifty United States of America. A Biography of America: This video series for high school and college students presents American history as a living narrative rather than a collection of facts and dates.

A Crash Course in World History: The videos are animated and fun. We have a few more details here. Abraham Lincoln at the Crossroads: An educational game for advanced middle- and high-school students. This site positions itself as the best online destination for information and resources related to the Ancient world. Ben's Guide to U.

A primer on American government for grades K Designed for use with upper secondary- and lower college-level students, this resource provides an overview of the principles of democracy and their origins, as well as an examination of how a variety of contemporary political systems function. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a nonprofit devoted to the improvement of history education.


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Don't miss their iTunesU collection with talks including: Google Historical Voyages and Events: This site is dedicated to the explorers, voyages, events, and historical backgrounds of countries throughout the world, and uses Google technology to bring this history back to life. History and Politics Out Loud: A searchable archive of politically significant audio materials for scholars, teachers, and students. The Living Room Candidate: An archive of presidential campaign commercials from to the present, organized by year, type, and issue, with teacher resources and playlists created by experts.

This site is designed to help K—12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U. Provides lesson plans and best practices. Funded by the U. The Internet History Sourcebooks: Hosted by Fordham University, this resource is broken down into sub-areas: What So Proudly We Hail: An educational resource about what it means to be an American, inspired by the anthology of the same title.

Through a series of online conversations about classic American texts, award-winning teacher-scholars Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass seek to educate both hearts and minds about American ideals, American identity and national character, and the virtues and aspirations of our civic life. World History for Us All: A powerful, innovative curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools.

The site offers a wealth of teaching units, lesson plans, and resources. Ideal for anyone thinking about how to teach world history to students. Created by Google, this valuable resource lets students virtually discover some of the most famous sites on earth -- for example, the ruins of Pompeii, Stonehenge, Versailles and more. The project offers an innovative way to teach history and geography to students of primary and secondary schools. Teachers can download related guides for using these resources.

It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks.

Scott Fitzgerald and more. A Crash Course in English Literature: See our post on this series. Offers a world of online resources for teachers -- from lesson plans to study guides to videos -- for teaching Shakespeare on the K levels. We offer more details here. Offers books for kids , , and Start browsing the library here. Find more information on our blog here. Search the Poetry Foundation's archive of over poems. Searchable by poet, title, first lines and more.

If you're looking for Shakespeare's plays on the web, MIT has you covered. They offer the first complete collection of Shakespeare's plays , from the First Folio of , in their original spelling and orthography. And some talented Russian artists did the animation. Shmoop's learning guides break down some of the texts most frequently taught in high school classrooms.

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Invitation to World Literature: A multimedia course for students, teachers, and lovers of literature. The course moves from ancient to modern literature, and is taught by David Damrosch at Harvard.

leondumoulin.nl Teaching Demo History Lesson

Find more details here. Features a comprehensive set of interactive arithmetic lessons. Unlimited practice is available on each topic which allows thorough mastery of the concepts. You can sort by grade level. This resource shows students the relevance of statistics in real-world settings. Video series for high school and college classrooms.

Education news. In context.

A step-by-step look at algebra concepts. This instructional video series for high school classrooms is produced by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications and Chedd-Angier. Adrian Banner, a lecturer at Princeton, has put together a lecture series in video that will help you master calculus, a subject that has traditionally frustrated many students. The 24 lectures are available on iTunes. Site features thousands of exercises designed to help young students K-8 practice math. Features practice questions, step-by-step explanations, engaging awards and certificates, easy-to-read progress reports, and more.

You can dive into the Khan Academy's math tutorials using the following links: It provides resources for students of all ages. Helps young children gain confidence and mastery of basic educational skills. Its math section comes recommended by our readers. Bills itself as the web's most extensive mathematical resource. Bach's Complete Organ Works: Introduces elementary and middle school children to classical music in a fun and entertaining way.

How one social studies teacher makes history come alive

Exploring the World of Music: How do you plan your lessons? All of my lessons have two elements. What will my students be able to do at the end of this lesson and how will they demonstrate their skills? This is always based upon what knowledge and skills my students understand well and do not need to review, and what they do need additional teaching on. My lesson plans are always driven by what proficiencies my student are best skilled in. If I need to slow down, then I do so, and vice versa. I never let the pace of a curriculum drive my decisions; if students need more time to practice a skill, they get it.

What qualities make an ideal lesson? Every lesson should have a goal, beginning assessment, formative assessments, middle adjustments, progress monitoring and summative assessments. They should be fun, engaging and full of opportunities for students to question, think, explore and learn, and safely demonstrate what they are learning. Lessons should be challenging and there should always be a connection to the next learning.

In a couple of ways. I try to handle it with my students first. I write a note on their assignment and ask them to come see me. At six weeks, if student is not doing well, I set up a mandatory weekly help session that lasts for the remainder of the year — whether they begin to pass or not. It is intended to get them back on track and not slip again and to build consistent learning practices. It is held after school and I meet with the student from 2: It is set up by me, student and parents, and I stress it is mandatory.

Attendance is taken and grade and skills monitored with more one-on-one work. We have a chat. I give them a get out of work free pass to refocus. Oftentimes, kids want help refocusing because other problems family, school, work, etc. A caring question, after class, goes a long way. How do you maintain communication with the parents? Email is the best and most efficient. Phone too, but email is best. What hacks do you use to grade papers? I am a tough grader. I grade for content and mechanics, but not as a punishment, rather as a learning experience.

Sometimes I hire graders usually college-age students who are learning to become teachers, former students who are now in college and need some money. I also have a grade quota I must meet seven days a week so that I do not get behind. As a social studies teacher, I am always grading essays. Sometimes I grade only a part of an assignment.

How one social studies teacher makes history come alive

But based on the feedback I have received from my students, they thank me every year for grading and putting comments on their work because they like to know what they need to improve on. I believe if my students work hard on an assignment, that they want me to pay them the same kind of attention on an assignment. I am never caught up. I start in August and am not caught up until the end of the school year. I have three examples: A friend and I were traveling through western Colorado.

We were lost and the map was not helpful at all. And in time you will understand it, give yourself time to learn. Chrzan, a third-year teacher, sees the abstract reasoning skills of mathematics — the proofs and deductions — as tools to help his students develop a firmer grasp on every aspect of their world. This is just one of the ways he is unusual. A Teach for America alumnus, Chrzan also went through a traditional teacher training program in college. He is a African-American male math teacher in a country that produces far too few of them.

And remember the Pokemon Go craze? I was a teaching assistant at a summer camp at Wayne State called Math Corps. Teachers only need to subscribe. Lesson Plan Library The Discoveryschool. S History, and World History. Lesson plans are organized as per Grades K-5, Grades , Grades and provide: History Center Education World provides practical resources for history educators.

Education World offers timelines, activities, work sheets, games, homework help, clip art, images, and articles. He offers an extensive list of history lesson plans as well as lesson plans related to terrorism, tolerance, or the events of September The Gateway to 21st Century Skills The Gateway is a Consortium that provides educators with access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit and commercial Internet sites.

It includes over 12, history and social studies resources and activities. Annotated and organized by grade level. History Channel A companion to the television channel, this commercial site contains a myriad of features and highlights for educators and students alike. Stories link to organized primary and secondary source materials found principally at U.

The purpose of the site including its separate, stand-alone channels is to take visitors on a virtual guided tour of relevant on-line source materials. Be sure to check out Click2History. Turning the Pages Turning the Pages is an award-winning interactive display system developed by The British Library to increase public access and enjoyment of some of its most valuable treasures.

There are currently fifteen treasures on display in Turning the Pages including: Primary Access Primary Access allows students to use primary source documents, pictures, videos, and recordings to create multimedia presentations about a specific topic in history. It uses a general layout that consists of video recordings, outlines of ideas, timelines of history that include dated pictures and archives and much more.

While the information may seem limited at times, it provides a good layout for students to begin formulating a general idea of what they want to focus on. ThinkQuest Library The ThinkQuest Library is a free educational resource featuring websites created by students around the world as part of a global competition. There are some outstanding websites here that ca serve as an example to students of what they can accomplish. Go to the Library section to view websites organized by topics.

This is a subscription website, but one that many teachers feel is worth the expense. It is aimed at students between years. C-SPAN in the Classroom is a free membership service that offers information and resources to assist educators in their use of primary source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You do not have to be a member to use C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but membership includes access to teaching ideas, activities and classroom tools. Teacher Resources provides course material and helpful link.

For information on a variety of more specific topics, see the helpful Publications section. The K-5 Economics and Economics are organized so that you can locate resources by concept, by standards, and by lesson. If you need a lesson or information on a particular concept e. These game descriptions are divided into two major categories, Micro and Macroeconomics. The website is simple in design, thus making it very easy to navigate.

Geography World A Geography teacher from Pennsylvania has put together this award-winning teaching resource. Contents are organized around four major areas: Check out the links to Maps and Globes as well as the Geography Quizzes area. The site design may look outdated, but the resources are updated regularly. The Lesson Plan section contains unique social studies and history lesson plans written and submitted by teachers for various grade levels. National Council for the Social Studies: Links are categorized by themes of the Curriculum Standards for Social Studies.

Teachers share classroom experiences at the site and on the NCSS listserv. Many of these resources involve technology integration, especially internet use. The History News Network The HistoryNewsNetwork was created in June and features articles by historians on both the left and the right who provide historical perspective on current events. HNN exists to provide historians and other experts a national forum in which to educate Americans about important and timely issues, and it is the only web site on the Internet wholly devoted to this task.

See also related eHistory resources from OSU. History Lesson Plans TeAchnology is an online teacher resource offering thousands of K lesson plans and free printable worksheets. Voice of the Shuttle: History Page Part of an extensive guide to humanities resources that provides numerous links to feature sites, teaching resources, electronic journals, course syllabi, and more.

Aimed at university educators. History Run by a small educational publishing company, this website provides free online materials for major history curriculum subjects.


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Visitors can sign up for a free monthly e-mail newsletter covering web reviews and using technology in the history classroom. Teachers are invited to send in details of any online history lessons they have produced for their students. Created by National Park Service interpreters, preservation professionals, and educators, these lessons are free for classroom use.

Content includes fundamental information about history teaching, resources, a concise alternative textbook and lesson plans. The site is detailed and well organized, but not actively maintained and thus there are several broken links. The Academy Curricular Exchange The Curriculum Exchange offers a variety of lesson plans created by a consortium of teachers from 14 states.