Sunday, November 28, 2010

Weekly Core Subjects Resources

Hope all my fellow Americans had an enjoyable Thanksgiving and those from other parts of the World took time to give thanks for something or someone.  Just a few more weeks till Christmas break.  Hopefully you spend some time looking at the great resources on the web during that time.  It was a Christmas break a year ago that I decided to dedicate time to this blog and using Twitter more often.

English
I do recommend looking at a previous post on VerbaLearn.

You might also be interested in this article about Technology Being a Key Tool in Writing Instruction.

I did find an interesting link for those of you that teach Shakespeare; it is a YouTube Channel for Animated Shakespeare from the BBC.

Repeat After Us is an online library and language lab.  The library is a collection of copyright-free English text and scripted recordings.  You can browse by Author, Title, and Genre.  For a good explanation of Repeat After Us, visit the Edge 21 Blog

Mathematics
High School Math is a great resource from Jefferson County Tennessee school district.  It has links to several resources broken down by subject matter.  There is also a general section.  As you can tell by the link, it is specifically for high school teachers.

Calcoolate is the "Coolest Online Calculator" - Give it a try

ACT Question of the Day - A great site where an ACT type math problem is provided and then using Flash it plays out how to solve the problem.  Great to start a class period.

Math in Movies is a great site from Harvard University.  There are always down days in education around testing and I know teachers like to show movies, but math teachers generally have trouble finding movies that relate to content.  This site helps to solve that problem.

Science
Science Direct is a site dedicated to providing articles and information related to all science subject matter.  If you create an account you can save your favorite articles and journal entries to access later. 

Science NetLinks is a site for K-12 educators that provides lessons, resources, tools and other activities that are standards-based internet experiences for students.  Worth a look around for you science teachers.

We Choose the Moon is a Flash-based interactive recreation to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11.  It does take some time to get through the experience, but it is worth a look.  There are photo galleries that you can look at while waiting for the interactive to get through the process.

HubbleSite is dedicated to everything that has to do with the Hubble Space Telescope.  There are several galleries of images that are amazing to look at and just get students think about Space.

Cells Alive is a site for science teachers that brings the study of cells to life.  There are several interactives and galleries to investigate cells.  

Science Simulations from PhET from the University of Colorado.  These have been going around for math, but there are also several great interactives and simulations for the science subject matter.  You can find the simulations categorized by subject matter.  Definitely worth examining if you are a science teacher. 

Social Studies
The National Archives Experience is a great resource for history teachers to find several primary documents as well as lessons and activities for the classroom.  There are several digital image galleries that could be accessed by teachers. 

Foreign Relations of the United States is an archive of events that the United States was involved in with foreign countries.  The collection goes as far back as the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln and ends with the 1960's.  These documents have been recently declassified. 

The Supreme Court: Games is available from PBS and provides 9 different games/interactives related to The Supreme Court and cases they were involved in.  If you are a government teacher I highly recommend viewing this site and seeing how you can use these games in the classroom.  There are also several other links not related to the games that can be of use for studying the Supreme Court.

Smarthistory is a multimedia web-book about art and history.  If you teach Arts and Humanities or are studying the Renaissance and Reformation, this would be a valuable site to keep available to examine art.  The art is organized by time period, which makes it easy to find art that you are looking for.

The History Teacher's Attic is a site created by a teacher who takes all the lessons and activities that he has done through the years and shares it with his readers.  In a recent post I shared his post about TED Talks.  It has been a while since a new post, but there are still several great resources for social studies teachers to examine.

Social Studies - A MUST SEE!!!!!
State of the Union is a site that examines in-depth EVERY SINGLE State of the Union Address.  You can read George Washington's first State of the Union Address and discover what was important during his time as President.  State of the Union breaks down the word usage and occurrence in every speech.  I am really impressed with this site.  It is a great way to examine history.  When you visit the site, read the instructions so that you understand all that it has to offer.  There is also a great essay about the history of the State of the Union and occurrences of words from all of them as well as charts and graphs.  Even if you don't teach history, this is interesting.

BONUS!!
ABC's of Web Literacy is an interactive site to help students understand the five criteria for evaluation of information on the web.  Students today really don't understand how to decipher what a quality website is.  If students are conducting research, have them view the ABC's of Web Literacy first.

Google Earth Tours Tips - a Great Wiki with great information, resources, and videos for using Google Earth.

Blogs 4 Edu is a wiki created by members of my PLN for educators to share their blogs, especially those that are just getting started.  You can also find links to several "Blog Projects" to help bloggers get ideas for potential posts.  If you are new to blogging, I highly recommend spending some time on this site. 

Find something useful?  If not, check out my previous Weekly Core Subjects Resources Posts

You might also be interested in my publications to learn about various Web 2.0 Tools to use in the classroom.

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