This tool is a great lesson plan resource for correlating art with other curricular areas! First, scroll down to Featured Resources, Resources by Subject Matter, or Resources by Grade Level. Curricular Areas include Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, STEAM, Social Justice, Critical Thinking, and several others. Click the resulting lessons to view a PDF that includes links to artwork images at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Common Core standards, and a detailed lesson plan.

tag(s): art history (86), artists (78)

US Digital Literacy is a comprehensive informational site to help better deliver digital literacy information to students. Help to prepare your students to understand and use information in multiple formats from a broad range of sources. Students need to be able to read, and interpret media, reproduce data and images, evaluate, and apply new knowledge from digital environments. Learn how to use the tools, promote responsible digital citizenship, while providing a framework to access, analyze, and create new information. Under Digital Toolkits find information about digital citizens, web 2.0, augmented reality, social bookmarks, wikis, images and creative commons, keyboarding practice, and mobile learning communities. For your own use, find professional learning networks, adaptive learning systems, learning management systems, project based learning, and STEM and STEAM. The Twenty-first- Century Skills section gives background in the Common Core, core subjects, learning and innovative skills, information and media literacy, and life and career skills. Instructional Strategies provide information for classroom management, activating strategies, vocabulary strategies, cognitive growth strategies, organizing strategies, summarizing strategies, and assessment types. Information regarding thoughtful technology leadership includes videos to promote conversations and challenges for your school website. Each section includes interesting and informative videos. The videos are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): augmented reality (7), digital citizenship (90), literacy (109), professional development (394)

Enhance STEAM activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/Design, Math) through great ideas found on the this blog. The ideas demonstrate activities for use including instructions and images of students completing activities. View archives for additional lessons. Find art, articles, lessons, or resources under the categories link. Add your email for notification of new posts and updates.

tag(s): blogs (66), STEM (265)

The PBS Nova site about the Civil War ironclad the Monitor offers some unexpected treats. Students can see whether they can run the steam engine without blowing it up, and the curious can take a simulated 360 degree tour of various parts of the ship. This site includes several lesson plans (most linked to standards), and more. There is a lot of information to learn from, but few activities required flash.

tag(s): civil war (134), lincoln (60)

If you want to get students involved in listening to poetry, try this site featuring real life SOUNDS of poetry in both ballads and the blues. Ballads are traditionally taught as story poems and, while this site does that too, it makes ballads more relevant to the music that kids listen to today. Use this site to teach about meters (iambic triameter and iambic tetrameter) in ways that students can HEAR. The images of the short films are great, too. The site includes readings and singing of great, classic examples of ballads as well as some rarer film footage of great blues singers (ex: John Jackson singing "Steamboat Whistle" at Wolf Trap in 1997). There is a wide variety of tracks to choose from and the site includes lesson plans.

tag(s): blues (22), poetry (190)

Here's an extremely well-designed site about the history of American transportation that really moves. You can approach the content in several ways: an eighteen part chronology filled with images, thematic presentations on immigration, technology, etc., or a sizeable collection of reproducible lessons and teaching materials. Middle schoolers should handle the writing level adequately, and the site is sufficiently visual that upper elementary users will follow the presentation. This one should be a welcome addition to anyone's transportation unit.

tag(s): air (105), railroads (14), transportation (32)

This virtual museum explores the world of paddlewheel riverboats through collections of photographs of a number of famous boats. There are also exhibits and articles to view and read. The site's Learning Center highlights which exhibits may be most useful in developing lesson plans, including a site that examines the science behind steam engines.

tag(s): mississippi (5)

This is an online STEAM do-it-yourself that lets you experiment with lines, fills, and color to create your own kaleidoscope. There are lots of possible imaging, color, and mathematical connections that one might draw from this one. It's also just plain fun to try. Meets Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS):

tag(s): animation (62)

Looking for a nice animated illustration to add to your discussion of inventors and technology? This site offers accurate "wire-frame" illustrations of how several different types of internal combustion and steam engines operate. Each includes a step-by-step explanation of how the engine operates, making it easy to compare differences among engine designs. Even grownups will like this one.

tag(s): industrialization (11), inventors and inventions (71)