Title of website: Hip Hughes History 

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

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. 

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

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.

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. 

 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. 

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!

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. 

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

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.