# data[].attributes.headline
Kim's pick - Freetech4Teachers! RIchard Byrne

# data[].attributes.subject
Kim's pick - Freetech4Teachers! RIchard Byrne

# data[].attributes.body
This is one of Kim Kenward''s favorites!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kim's pick - Freetech4Teachers! RIchard Byrne

# data[].attributes.body
Website Title: Kindergarten - KDL Resource

Source Link: PDF/.doc Link

How I Would Use It In My Classroom: This resource is full of books that are available at the Kent District Library and are associated with various Kindergarten social studies standards. I would use this list in my classroom to be able to quickly and easily choose children’s books that can support my social studies lessons.

Website Title: Michigan Open Book Project

Website Address: http://textbooks.wmisd.org/index.html

How I Would Use It In My Classroom: My district has been using the MI Open Book Project for the past few years to guide our social studies instruction. Everything can be accessed electronically and the textbooks provide a great starting place for social studies conversations and activities  in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
Title of website: Mission US: A Public Media Project

URL: https://www.mission-us.org/

Classroom use: As I was exploring the web resources I stumbled upon this one and thought this would be an excellent resource to use in my classroom. I have never heard about this resource before and was incredibly amazed by this discovery. It is an interactive game that allows young people to immerse themselves into different moments in history. The website has designed missions where students are characters in the game and must make decisions that are relevant to the content. I would use this in my own classroom since we spend a great deal of time discussing the American Revolutionary war. On this website there is a whole interactive game set during the American Revolutionary war that allows students the opportunity to immerse themselves into the time period and motivates them to actively participate.

Title of website: Ducksters

URL: https://www.ducksters.com/

Classroom use: Ducksters is an engaging and interactive website that teachers and students can use to learn about social studies and science related content. The website is user friendly and is easily accessible to find any topic you are interested in learning about for students K-8. I have used this website in my own classroom to introduce social studies related topics since it offers a brief overview of specific events in history. In addition, I have allowed students to use this website during research activities to collect facts and details about a particular topic, person, or event.

# data[].attributes.body
BrainPOP
BrainPOP is an engaging and interactive website that teachers and students can use for learning in all subjects, including social studies. Within BrainPOP there is BrainPOP Jr (K-3), BrainPOP ELL (which is awesome!),  GameUP, and news/resources for current events. Each subject area has videos, interactive lessons, games, quizzes, etc., which makes student learning come to life! When I was a preschool teacher my students loved BrainPOP Jr, and it's a great resource that can be used both inside and outside of school. For lower el grades, BrainPOP could be used as a free-time or station activity, where students can explore different topics of their choosing. For more structured learning, I would have students engage in the resources on specific topics according to what we are learning (U.S. Presidents, Oceans, the Underground Railroad, etc.).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

# data[].attributes.body
Scholastic: The First Thanksgiving
As I was exploring this resource, I thought it would be great for students to use in the classroom. This website provided by Scholastic has resources for K-8 students to explore the first Thanksgiving in an interactive way. The site provides tours of the Mayflower and its sea route,  what it was like in daily life, what they ate, primary sources such as letters, videos, games, teaching resources and more! If having access to technology, this site would be great for students to individually explore on classroom computers when beginning the lesson/unit on the First Thanksgiving.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

# data[].attributes.body
Title: Plickers

URL: https://get.plickers.com/

Classroom use : Do you have limited technology tools for your students in your classroom? Are you always worried about preparing the computer, logging in, and fixing the unexpected problem from students? If your answer is Yes, and you will love Plickers. Students don’t need any technology tools or Wifi to engage their learning through Plickers. The teacher uses one mobile device to scan paper cards for student responses. Students give their input anonymously. I will use Plickers to create questions to check students’ understanding during my teaching, and I can also create exit questions at the end of the lesson. There are cards with larger fonts for young students or the visually impaired. As a Chinese teacher, I could also use this for vocabulary or sentence structure practice. It can also be used for formative assessment to identify misconceptions that students may have at the start of a unit.

Title: Quizizz

URL: https://quizizz.com/

Classroom use : Quizizz is an engaging formative assessment tool that would be great to use as a prior knowledge check, vocabulary practice, and in-class quiz game, or exit ticket. My students enjoy the game-based learning, and they love the friendly competition and memes. Students can create their characters in the game, so engagement and motivation of learning are high. It is very easy to link with Google Classroom, and it is easy to assign a Quizizz to students. I would recommend trying Quizizz in your classroom. It is a fantastic, flexible, easy to use, and free game-based learning platform that will be engaging for your students and will make learning even more fun!

# data[].attributes.body
Title: Mission US
URL: https://www.mission-us.org/games/for-crown-or-colony/
This site has interactive "choose your own adventure" type games for students. There are games for American Revolution, Civil War, Westward Expansion, Immigration, The Great Depression, and WWII. Students move through the game making choices and meeting characters, some historical some fictional. In my classroom, we'd play the American Revolution game. Each mission is about an hour and students can log into their game with a username and password. I think that my students would be highly engaged in this game and want to play at home as well as at school!

Title: FanSchool
URL: https://www.fanschool.org/
FanSchool is a paid site but totally worth the money! This site allows students to draft either counties of the world or states from the US onto a fantasy team. Teams can earn and lose points based off of mentions in the news, as well as positive and negative story vibes. I played FanSchool with my Current Events class to help us learn about the world. The site offers a bunch of supplemental resources and links reliable news sources to each country or state to help students learn. My students were very engaged in FanSchool and enjoyed doing the research to build better teams. The site allows for trades or drop and adds (like Fantasy Football), so my students spent their time analyzing the news stories to decide if each country would be a smart addition to their team.

# data[].attributes.body
Title: World Fact Book Online

URL: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

This source “provides information on the history, people and society, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.” The CIA does a great job providing facts that are easy to read and understand for any age. I personally have used it before when doing a project on the criminal justice system of Greece. This resource gives students an easy way to see the world. Additionally, it provides information on regional and world maps, the world leaders names and positions in every country, and also has a short, one-page country summary. I found it to be straight forward, and a great tool to share with students, that can learn accurate facts in a fun way. In the classroom, I would request students to choose two countries and create a report comparing and contrasting it. That would allow them to see how different systems work in real life.

Title: Crime Mapping

URL: https://www.crimemapping.com/map/mi/grandrapids

“Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns.”Every city, or region has a crime map. It allows law enforcement to create a pattern of occurrences and use it to increase or decrease the monitoring of certain areas. This resource provides specific summaries of what type of crime happened, when, and where. It also includes charts of crime summary by date. In the classroom, this map could be used when studying the use of computers and strategy in law enforcement (such as CompStat). Overall, criminal justice students find this interactive map fun and useful as the can search their own address and analyze crime by region – downtown and suburbs – and increases their interest in searching the causes of crime in certain areas.

# data[].attributes.body
Website: The Mint
URL:  http://www.themint.org
This website, run by Northwestern Mutual, has terrific resources for kids, teens, parents, and teachers all related to economic skills. There are games and quizzes with a ton of embedded information for kids and teens to help foster positive financial skills. For teachers, there are several lesson plans in different areas of economics to assist with instruction, specifically in grades 6-12, but potentially adaptable for younger students use, as well. The lesson ideas were engaging and interactive, sure to be remembered by students.

Website: Flocabulary
URL: http://www.flocabulary.com
I actually use Flocabulary in all content areas, but find it being most specifically applicable in Social Studies. They have fun rap videos for a variety of topics in Social Studies education, organized by topic and grade level. I use them at the beginning of class sessions as a sort of review and an anticipatory set. My students love them. They have favorites that they often request. They really help with rehearsal of
tricky vocabulary, e.g. supply and demand, latitude and longitude. Students remember the words to the sons,

# data[].attributes.body
Title: Immigration - Stories of Yesterday and Today
URL: http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/index.htm
This website is a great resource for learning about the immigration process through the years and includes links to age appropriate book lists that discuss the immigration experiences that people have had when coming to this country.  This would especially helpful in a diverse classroom because it could help bring book characters that students could identify with (look like them) and help those students who may be from the normative culture for the school and surrounding area understand the perspectives of others.

Title: Google Earth
URL: https://earth.google.com/web/
This website is a fun way to let students explore the globe. They can search for different areas around the world, zooming in as close as street level in places. They can also see pictures taken from different angles at different locations so as to be able to notice things like the geography of the area, the density of cities, and other geographical characteristics. My own two boys love to sit and play around with the site to explore different areas they've heard of, that we've been to, or just to generate random places to see. It can be used in so many different ways to get students excited about geography and the world that we all live in.

# data[].attributes.body
Title: Mission US

Address: https://www.mission-us.org/

I had never seen this website before. It is an interactive activity set up as a game for students. It also includes classroom activities, primary sources, and historical background resources. In my class westward expansion comes up and there is a whole interactive game that gives the students choices as they are actively engaged in the material.

Title: PBS learning

Address: https://wgvu.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/teaching-the-constitution/

Every September 17 I have to teach about the constitution, honestly not always knowing what about it to teach to third graders especially when they don’t have a lot of background information. This web page has a lot of resources including primary sources and videos that I plan to use to better teach my students about the constitution.

# data[].attributes.body
Website: Social Studies School Service
URL:  https://www.socialstudies.com/c/index.web?s@qLSNX02PHlS.g
Classroom Use:
this is a resource that can provide classroom teachers the convenience of creating customized curriculum and lesson plans, easy searching of interactive activities and assessments of different settings. The resource can be easily adapted to different devices and keep students engaged in learning. As a classroom teacher responsible for the teaching of different subjects every day, I think this resource provides real support and I would like to use it for my teaching next year, especially the Nystrom World for history and geography and Active Classroom for activities to keep students engaged.

Website: kidskonnect
URL:  https://kidskonnect.com/
Classroom Use:
I used this website during distance instruction period when we were experiencing school closure due to Covid-19. This website is mainly about worksheets. Teachers can customize worksheets for learning content and help students review what have learned. Worksheets can be done online. Parent can also have worksheets printed and let their students do paperwork, so kids do not need to stay online all the time.

# data[].attributes.body
Website Title: GE Teach

URL: https://geteach.com/

Classroom Use: As a lower elementary school teacher, I chose GE Teach because it seemed to best fit the skills, abilities, and content for first grade students. I really liked how this website offers a side-by-side view of two Google Earth maps with the ability to choose from a variety of map types to compare. This could easily be integrated across the curriculum to offer a spatial understanding for students and give them access to seeing parts of world they would not have normally been able to see. Google Earth is fairly user-friendly as well and students could practice using the website to explore and use GE Teach to compare different maps. In a discussion of our “then and now” curriculum, I could incorporate an exploration with GE Teach to compare different parts of the world in their energy use, physical characteristics, and population density to offer a deeper understanding of the world for my students.

Website Title: Discovery Education

URL: https://www.discoveryeducation.com/

Classroom Use: My district provides funding for educator use of this website. Discovery Education is a phenomenal source for informational videos for all ages. It is divided into three grade bands: K-5, 6-8, and 9-12. I found this website especially helpful in presenting on topics for special days such as the story of Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Constitution Day. Videos can be chosen based on grade or by topic. My class watched a video on the pilgrimage right before our Fall break - the students found it very interesting and intriguing. I loved how it communicated the important details in a student-friendly way that was appropriate for my students. We paused the video throughout to discuss parts that might have been more difficult to understand or to discuss certain topics. I remember how exciting it was to see a handful of students “come alive” with passion in exploring a social studies topic and video. It is a great resource for providing a visual support to the curriculum and an opportunity for classroom discussion around social studies (or other subjects) topics.

# data[].attributes.body
Website: Eyewitness History
URL: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/cwfrm.htm
Classroom Use: This website gives firsthand accounts of historical events. I would use this website to make historical events more relatable to students and to discuss how history looks different through different eyes. I think a fun follow up activity would be to have students write about big events (such as elections, COVID-19, natural disasters, etc.) through their perspectives. Then we can share how everyone's perspective was a bit different.

Website: Make Your Case
URL: http://www.makeyourcasegame.com/
Classroom Use: This is an online simulation where students participate in a mock trial. I would use this in a lesson about government. It brings up topics such as jury duty, the criminal justice system, and the various roles that take place in a court room.

# data[].attributes.body
Hip Hughes History Youtube Channel

Title of website: Hip Hughes History

URL: https://www.youtube.com/user/hughesDV

Classroom use: I would use this resource in the classroom to either introduce a topic or wrap up a topic. The videos done by Hip Hughes are so upbeat, quick, spunky, and engages students easily! He provides information without history without being boring and uses his technology platform to reach many students. By showing these videos students are typically more engaged. They love to watch videos in school so when they have wonderful and appropriate resources like this, it's an added benefit.

Additional website I found helpful: Elementary Social Studies through PBS

Title of website: PBS Learning Media

URL: https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/subjects/social-studies/elementary-social-studies/

Classroom Use:  PBS learning media is especially helpful in so many ways. What I find unique is that they have a page for every subject area. On the social studies page I have found great resources for lesson planning, interactive games for the students, short videos to watch, articles for older students to read, and much more. The website does a wonderful job of covering all areas of social studies from history to geography. I would use this resource to supplement the curriculum I will teach in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
Website: World Fact Book Online
URL: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
Classroom Use: I would use this website  as a reliable source for student's research assignments. For example, creating a travel brochure for a chosen country. They would then share the information they gathered about their location that someone who wants to go there should know. It is a good site for exploring other places around the world and sparking cultural awareness.

Website: Smithsonian History Explorer
Classroom Use: This website provides resources to teach American History with overlapping into other subject areas. You'll see from the page that it includes lessons, activities, interactive media, and more. I'd take advantage of their free lessons to teach about how a president is elected in America.

# data[].attributes.body
WEBSITE: My Hero
URL: https://myhero.com/my-hero-curated-social-studies-resources-organized-by-grade-level
CLASSROOM USE: this is a huge resource with many applications in the classroom. From lesson plans on social justice and human rights to stories of local and world heroes, this site can be used to explore in inspirational people and get students motivated to make social change. It could be used for lessons related to activism, black history month, civil rights/human rights, and/or environmental conservation.

WEBSITE: The Redistricting Game
URL: http://redistrictinggame.org/
CLASSROOM USE: this web resource is a game that helps teach political redistricting. It aims to help students understand how redistricting works and the potential for abuse that the current system allows for. I would use this resource to help students in meeting these goals and gaining a better understanding of how redistricting works in a fun and engaging way.  It could serve as review game to cement knowledge learned in previous related lessons.

# data[].attributes.body
Website name: BBC Bitesize
URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zcw76sg
Use in the classroom: I could use this website in a variety of ways in my classroom. They have all these different time periods to create lessons around. In addition, they have lesson plans, videos, pictures of objects, and interactive discussion questions.

Website name: NEH.gov- Edsitement
URL: https://edsitement.neh.gov/search?keywords=&f%5B0%5D=search_content_type%3Astudy_activity
Use in the classroom: This website has a ton of amazing resources. You can search for exactly what you need. In addition, this website has lesson plans, student activities, media resources, and a teacher's guide. Once you click on the page you want to look at it will tell you the grades the resource is intended for along with the subjects and topics.