4106 social-studies results | sort by:

Spider Scribe - spiderscribe.net
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): brainstorming (23), graphic organizers (39), mind map (22)
In the Classroom
Have your class create organizers together, such as in a brainstorming session on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Easily add images to maps for young students, ELL learners, or non-readers to understand relationships and learn vocabulary. Or you can assign students to "map" out a chapter or story or assign groups to create study guides using this tool. Use this site for literature activities, research projects, social studies, or science topics. Use this site to create family trees or food pyramids in family and consumer science. Have students collaborate together (online) to create group mind maps or review charts before tests on a given subject. Have students organize any concepts you study; color-code concepts to show what they understand, wonder, and question; map out a story, plot line, or plan for the future; map out a step-by-step process (life cycle).Edge Features:
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NOVA Body and Brain - NOVA/PBS
Grades
3 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): carbon dioxide (15), carbon footprint (11), earth (224), environment (325), human body (132), nuclear energy (25), nutrition (159), solar energy (39), space (222)
In the Classroom
Discover some terrific lessons about a variety of topics. For example, under Environment find a great lesson for Capturing Carbon: Where Do We Put It? Find background information to understand the material and questions for discussion that can be used with your class. Find additional resources along the side.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Dib Dab Doo and Dilly too... A smarter safer way to search the Internet - Dibdabdoo.com
Grades
K to 7tag(s): alphabet (86), animals (322), animation (63), clip art (9), colors (80), comics and cartoons (65), cooking (31), crafts (39), creative writing (164), cross cultural understanding (123), cultures (109), dance (27), dinosaurs (55), disabilities (20), diseases (72), drawing (78), fitness (50), flags (22), folktales (55), geometric shapes (173), grammar (212), homework (42), insects (72), journalism (54), measurement (175), museums (53), mysteries (22), numbers (197), nutrition (159), oceans (165), operations (123), origami (15), painting (66), photography (157), poetry (219), psychology (66), rainforests (21), religions (68), search engines (62), seasons (36), sign language (8), social networking (112), spelling (168), sports (99), trivia (19), vocabulary (321), weather (201)
In the Classroom
Help students learn about narrowing and refining research by demonstrating this site on a projector or interactive whiteboard. As you start a project, take the time to SHOW how to use this tool to save time and find appropriate resources. Allow students to explore this site on their own finding relevant information from the various topics. If time permits, have students research a specific topic and create a multimedia presentation using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge tools reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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How Our Laws Are Made - Mike Wirth
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): branches of government (49), congress (32)
In the Classroom
Use the graphic as an introduction to a detailed discussion. Share the site on your projector or interactive whiteboard. Use it to reinforce the process once you've taught the lesson. Encourage students to bookmark it to review or test their understanding. Anyone who teaches civics, government or US history will be able to use this graphic on an interactive whiteboard. For that matter, it should be required viewing for citizens and politicians alike!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Draw Island - DrawIsland.com
Grades
2 to 8tag(s): drawing (78), graphic design (35)
In the Classroom
Allow students to create collaborative drawings through this site as responses to literature. Share the finished products on an interactive whiteboard, projector, or your class website. Have a group of students create a drawing, then another group can use that as a story prompt. Use this site with students in a computer lab (or on laptops) setting to create a drawing of the setting of a story as it is being read aloud. Have students create an online book of images and captions about any topic using saved images with Storybird,reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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American Indian Response to Environmental Changes - National Museum of the American Indian
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): environment (325), native americans (78), natural resources (58)
In the Classroom
Project this site on an interactive whiteboard and watch the videos on each of the tribes. If you have laptops available, have students navigate on their own. Have the class take the included interactive quizzes to see what they've learned. Group students and have each group read about a different tribe. Then using the online story project planner, have students create a presentation about their tribe that can be uploaded to the site. Be sure to visit the teacher area for lesson plans, links and other resources.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Trello - Fog Creek Software
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (179), graphic organizers (39), organizational skills (125)
In the Classroom
Use this site in the classroom for organizing any long term project such as a research report or collaborative projects. Create a board for each group with a timeline and assign parts for each project. Gradually release the responsibility from one project to the next, asking students to create their own task lists so they learn time management. Teachers of learning support and gifted will love this tool as a way to teach organizational skills. Share it with parents to support their organizationally challenged students. Yearbook or school newspaper advisors may want to consider this site for organizing and assigning tasks. Share this site with your school's PTA as a resource for organizing and planning school events.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Thinglink - Thinglink.com
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): bookmarks (68), DAT device agnostic tool (179), game based learning (138), gamification (86), images (277)
In the Classroom
Use digital images of lab experiments or class activities for sharing on a class wiki or blog with clickable enhancements offering additional information. Have students add links or even a blog reaction or explanation to their project or experiment image. Use the site for making a photography or art portfolio blog. Have students annotate images to explain their work or various techniques they used. World language or ESL/ELL teachers can enhance images with links to sound files or other explanations for better understanding. Use in world language to label items in an image with the correct words in that language. Young students could write simple sentences to practice language skills while explaining about a favorite picture or activity. Use in Science to explain the experiment or in a Consumer Science class to explain cooking or other techniques. Consider creating a class account for student groups to use together. Teachers can create a Thinglink of an image with questions and links that students must investigate to respond as a self-directed learning activity. An image of a tree could have questions and links about types of leaves, photosynthesis, and the seasons, for example. Gifted students could create a collection of annotated images that link to sound files to add "personalities" to science objects (think of the talking trees in the Wizard of Oz) or create an annotated image of a almost anything they research to go beyond regular curriculum they have already mastered: Annotate an image of a food product to link to information about its sources and potential harms. Annotate an image of a campaign poster and "debunk" its claims with links to video clips that show the politician in action, etc. Annotate an advertisement with links its propaganda techniques. Teens with a sophisticated sense of humor will especially enjoy linking to ironic examples that debunk or offer a satire of the original!Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
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Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
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Scrumblr - scrumblr
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): bulletin boards (18), organizational skills (125)
In the Classroom
Use this as a place to put web quest links and information. As a project idea, have students create a wall about their summer vacation. They can include links and other information to display. Have elementary students build a class homework board each day, having a different student add the assignment for each subject; then share the link to the board for them to access at home. "Writing down" assignments can be fun! Any activity you can do by sorting and ranking words, terms, or ideas can be done instantly (and changed later) on a Scrumblr board. Use this tool as a new format for book reports. Do your students have favorites such as music or sports? Create a wall around these favorites or hobbies. Use a wall for grammar or vocabulary words or science unit terms. Create walls of pro/con for debates or high level thinking viewpoints. Post assignments, reminders, or study skills on a wall. Do you use student scribes or reporters? Use the site to create a wall with the goings-on in class. See a similar tool (and more ideas to use either tool) in the TeachersFirst review of Stixy here. Decide which one you prefer!This is the perfect quick start tool for your gifted students to record the ideas that occur to them during class. Have them create their own boards with a "what if" column for the crazy questions that pop in their heads, things like "What if Shakespeare wrote in a different meter?" or "Would Poe and Stephen King get along?" Give permission for far-fetched questions and graffiti! Have them create pro/con boards for tough topics such as gun rights during a unit on the Constitution, including links to evidence to support the statements they make on notecards. This tool could also help them brainstorm and sequence steps for a major independent project, sometimes a real challenge for the brightest students!
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CK-12 - CK-12 Foundation
Grades
5 to 12tag(s): atoms (55), cells (99), charts and graphs (197), decades (10), energy (207), engineering (129), equations (151), fractions (228), genetics (88), inequalities (26), landforms (49), measurement (175), oceans (165), organisms (21), periodic table (51), probability (141), pythagorean theorem (33), rocks (52), scientific method (67), seasons (36), solar energy (39), solar system (119), statistics (127), STEM (173), test prep (97), variables (20)
In the Classroom
Introduce CK-12 to your students (and parents) on your interactive whiteboard and demonstrate ways to use the site at home. Be sure to create a link to the site on your class website or blog for easy access at any time. Create an account and upload your own resources and activities to create your own flexbooks for use with students. CK-12 is available in many languages. Use this site with your ESL/ELL students as a supplement to classroom resources.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Mining the Riches of History: Creating Oral Histories - TeachersFirst
Grades
3 to 9tag(s): interviews (16), local history (15), primary sources (93)
In the Classroom
Mark this in your Favorites as a way to develop information literacy in your classes, even if you no longer have a library/media specialist to help out.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Dr. Seuss Lesson Plans and Other Teaching Resources - Carla Beard- webenglishteacher
Grades
K to 8In the Classroom
If there was anything that Dr. Seuss wanted us to learn in his later years that you won't find in Oh, the Places You'll Go, you'll not only discover just about everything else here, you will also find out how to do it. Compare the works of Seuss and Silverstein by having students work in groups to prepare critical thinking questions about issues of friendship or making wise choices, exploring the relationship between sound and spelling using onomatopoeia in a standards-based lesson from Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?, reading Trees for Many Reasons to examine the importance of conserving natural resources, or introducing One Fish, Two Fish as a way to demonstrate Venn Diagrams with Teachersfirst Venn Diagram tool (reviewed here), you'll add humor that will liven up instruction. Permission is granted to link to any educational site, so feel free to post your favorite Seuss games and activities on your class page.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 12tag(s): news (262), vocabulary (321), writing prompts (93)
In 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, have students create blogs sharing their learning and understanding using Pen.io, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Storify - Xavier Damman and Burt Herman
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): collages (18), digital storytelling (153), social networking (112), twitter (45)
In the Classroom
Use Storify to create weekly stories of tweets, pictures, and videos from your classroom that can be sent home to parents. Create a story of learning based on a collaboration between classrooms as a way to chronicle and reflect on the collaboration. Build a semester or year-long "story" of your class tweets and activities as a sort of online scrapbook that can be shared with families. Invite other classrooms to take part in writing a collaborative story 140 characters at a time using Twitter. Create a story for any classroom topic such as current events, American History, famous mathematicians, or astronomy. Search for tweets from a favorite author or politician to tell his/her story.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
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ClassDojo - Sam Chaudhary and Liam Don
Grades
K to 8Please be aware that ClassDojo falls under the FERPA laws for "directory information" and "educational records." Any school getting funds from the Department of Education (public schools) is required to disclose to parents and get written consent to use ClassDojo with their child.
tag(s): behavior (46), classroom management (159), DAT device agnostic tool (179), game based learning (138), gamification (86), Special Needs (33)
In the Classroom
Consider using this program to reward a group of the week. Award points for positive behaviors such as participation, helping others, creativity, hard work, or create your own categories. Using ClassDojo for group behaviors will give immediate feedback to students if projected on your whiteboard or your projector. Use this tool to help your unfocused students stay on task. Share this site with students on the first day of school as you go over class expectations and your behavior plan for your classroom. Use ClassDojo to offer both negative and positive feedback to parents and students.Are you a regular education teacher with special education students mainstreamed into your classroom? Use Class Dojo to privately keep track of student behaviors and send a report to special education teachers or parents. This could be invaluable to a life skills, autistic support, gifted, or emotional support teacher who needs to track the behavior of each of the students as part of an IEP/GIEP. Alternative ed programs may find this tool very useful, as well, even up through high school.
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Festisite Playing Cards - Festisite
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): images (277)
In the Classroom
Upload images of famous historic figures and places to use as flash cards. Have students use these to learn dates and events. Create a deck of cards with your students' images and use to pull a card and call on students. Make a deck of cards with your students' images, laminate, then use for any FACE CARD ONLY card games played in the classroom. Create large format "cards" to make a start of the school year bulletin board with student faces. Use a set of laminated "student" cards to draw groups for small group projects. Make famous person cards to use in a review game where you must tell three facts about the person pictured.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Phreetings (photo+greetings) - Picture Sandbox
Grades
K to 12tag(s): images (277), photography (157), vocabulary (321)
In the Classroom
Hold an image captioning contest on projector/interactive whiteboard at the start of class about verbs by searching "run" or another action word. As a quick formative assessment, have students create a Phreeting using an image of a curriculum concept (a leaf, for example), with a greeting that explains about photosynthesis. During poetry month, have students compose a haiku message to accompany an image they find. Write and share similes and metaphors using image prompts and share the links on a class wiki. Share the links to the many quick projects on your class web page. Mark this quickie tool in your Favorites on your teacher public page so students can use it to send greetings and questions by email any time. Younger students/classes can make "Phreetings" to send to school helpers, visiting firemen, and others. ESL/ELL, speech/language, or world language students can practice writing simple sentences about an image they find and share the result via email or a link you collect on a class web page. If you have a class Flickr account, search for your own photos and have students add captions explaining the activity pictured and send them to the principal or parents. At holiday season, send Phreetings as practice writing informal "letters" or thank you notes.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Speechable - Enluminari
Grades
K to 12tag(s): comics and cartoons (65), firstday (25), images (277)
In the Classroom
The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Caption the homework directions on your teacher web page. Ask your students to create captions for class photos for all sorts of reasons. Use photos or digital drawings from your classroom, such as pictures taken during any hands-on activity. Have students draw in a paint program, save the file, and then add a caption. Spice up research projects about historic figures or important scientists. Have literary characters "talk" as part of a project. In a government class, add captions to photos explaining politicians' major platform planks during election campaigns. Caption the steps to math problem solving. Even primary students can make captions of an animal talking about his habitat or a "community helper" talking about his/her role. Make visual vocabulary/terminology sentences with an appropriate character using the term in context (a beaker explaining how it is different from a flask?). Students could also take pictures of themselves doing a lab and then caption the pictures to explain the concepts. This would be a great first day project (introducing yourself and breaking the ice). Share the class captions on your class web page or wiki! Leave directions to your class (for when a substitute is there). Use at back to school night to show your humorous side to the parents. Have students make talking photos of themselves as a visual tour of their new classroom for parents attending back to school night.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be shared by URL
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Re-Living the Wright Way - Tom Benson - NASA
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): aviation (35), flight (31), gravity (46), inventors and inventions (92), motion (69), scientists (69), wright brothers (20)
In the Classroom
This site provides teachers with resources on the topics of Newton's Laws of Motion, The Four Forces of Flight, Lift, Drag, Thrust, Weight, Center of Gravity, Roll, and Pitch. View the videos using an interactive whiteboard or projector. Download the simulations to your classroom computers and have students work in groups to solve them. Have students work cooperatively to complete one of the many activities found on the site like building a model airplane. Students can then conduct an investigation to see whose plane can fly the farthest.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Chartle - Dieter Krachtus
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): charts and graphs (197)
In the Classroom
You will want to play with this tool before using it in class. Use anywhere numerical data is collected and is best shown in a chart. Collect data in a science, survey, or math class and display it using different graphs to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using each graph type. Use for quick creation and sharing of created graphs. Create charts together easily on an interactive whiteboard when introducing the different types. Have students operate the board while others offer instructions on what to do next. Use graphs to portray different sets of data about a topic in a new and unique way. Use this tool to create graphs and charts for presentations and reports. Make quick charts students can share with others such as "How I spend my time" and "Places I have visited." During political campaign seasons, create charts to better visualize what the pollsters are saying.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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