Social Studies Resources
Recommended by Paul Bangiola
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The National Council for the Social Studies website is a comprehensive guide to social studies programs and awards, with lessons available for teachers from kindergarten through college.
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PBS Learning Media has a search engine for multimedia collections of social studies lessons in video, image, and interactive links, easy to sort by specific subject area.
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National Geographic Education is an engaging assortment of maps, videos, current events, games, and teaching resources for K-12 geography students and teachers.
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Teachinghistory.org has teaching materials, lessons, and quizzes for elementary through high school social studies, as well as an interactive digital classroom.
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The Library of Congress Teacher website provides classroom plans, activities, primary source guides and professional development resources for teachers K-12.
Recommended by Rebecca Nyquist
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The Natural History Museum website provides a number of web quests for students to engage in.
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PBS: Reporting America at War has a host of information related to American wars: lessons, readings, pictures, films, and other resources for teachers, incorporating many sources.
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New York Times: The Learning Network provides lessons and activities for students and teachers, useful for gathering newspaper articles related to primary sources.
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The National Endowment for the Humanities provides lesson plans on Teachingamericanhistory.org including primary and secondary sources with an audio library.
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The University of Maryland: Baltimore County Center for History Education provides easy-to-navigate lesson plans organized in chronological order.
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History Matters: Students as Historians is a guide of social studies projects done by high school students, useful for students to browse.
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An interactive slideshow presentation on the basics of Confucianism.
Recommended by Cindy Assini
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Mission US is a multimedia project that immerses players in U.S. history content through free interactive games.
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Grade level reading ranges are identified by Lexile measures. Descriptive information is appropriate for norm-referenced interpretations only.
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K-12 literacy and history lessons and questions sets (assessments) with Lexile reading levels appropriate for high school.
Recommended by Medha Kirtane, Ridgewood High School, NJ - Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teacher award honoree
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The Council for Foreign Relations for its teaching modules.
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The National Endowment for the Humanities for its lesson plans.
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Edsitement! is the National Edowment of the Humanities newsletter.
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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for Primary Sources and History by Era: collections and history by era.
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The Oral History Association for the process of oral history.
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The Week for current events and political magazines.
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Ridgewood High School website for its curriculum documents for sequencing or ideas. (follow these links for curriculum documents; District Admin, Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, Department Files à Curriculum (K12, all subjects)
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Newsela: “Translates” current events into grade appropriate vocabulary and text.