Art
New lesson plans, videos, and interactive resources from the Kennedy Center's expanded ArtsEdge website. The website offers how-to guides on topics such as arts integration, making cultural connections, and using art to teach 21st century skills. Students can listen to audio clips, watch performances, and look at the role music has played in popular culture and sports like football.
Smarthistory.org is a multimedia resource designed to replace the traditional art history textbook. Launched in 2005, Smarthistory began a partnership with the Khan Academy last year. The website offers more than 450 videos and 250 essays on art history, covering the ancient cultures to the Industrial Revolution to the modern age of Post-Colonialism. Explore contemporary topics such as feminist art, earth-conscious art, and performance art, and check out the Flickr photo gallery featuring masterpieces from around the world.
Also be sure to check out FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence), where you can delve into the work of legendary artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alexander Calder, Romare Bearden, and Mary Cassatt. FREE is a directory of resources available through the agencies of the federal government and nonprofit organizations.
Common Core State Standards
ASCD's free EduCore™ digital tool assists educators with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards in both mathematics and literacy. Funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, EduCore is a repository of evidence-based strategies, videos, and supporting documents.
The mathematic resources, developed by the Shell Centre, include more than 20 problem-solving and content-development formative assessment lessons. The literacy resources, created by the Literacy Design Collaborative, consist of templates for argumentation, informational, and narrative teaching that can be used by teachers across disciplines. You also can watch videos to learn about what the standards are and the challenges schools and districts are facing in their implementation, and hear from teachers and administrators who support the standards.
Languages
As stated on its website, the UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP) is an "on-line bibliographic database of teaching and learning materials for over 150 Less Commonly Taught Languages." The website includes links to authentic materials such as books, periodicals, videos, audio recordings, and maps, as well as downloadable images of product labels, signs, stamps and currency, menus, recipes, comics, newspaper clippings, tickets, programs, brochures, and other everyday items.
Literacy
As children move from country to country, they lose the stories of their native tongue, says the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation, which has developed a digital library of historical and contemporary books from around the world. The Foundation states that children deserve access to books of their culture regardless of where they live; therefore, this innovative resource contains 4,643 books in 61 languages. The ICDL has been named one of 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians.
Reading Rockets, by WETA, was created to help struggling young readers. From interviews with children's book authors to podcasts, games, texts, and reading guides, the website offers a wide range of resources to assist parents, teachers, principals, and librarians in their efforts to improve students' reading skills. The website also offers classroom strategies for teaching reading, links to research, and themed book lists.
Math
Kids can get help with their math homework and with mastering the basics of numbers and number operations by using Discovery Education's tools. The website offers resources such as videos and tutorials that explain basic operations and help with the mastery of math skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Math Tools is a project of The Math Forum @ Drexel and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation. This digital community allows educators to upload lessons and activities and share effective learning resources. The lessons range from the prekindergarten level to calculus and also include topics such as financial education and probability and statistics.
PBS Teachers' STEM education resource center features free webinars, videos, and professional development resources from various educators and educational institutions, including Arizona State University and Maryland Public Television, and the Utah Education Network. Through the website, you can tap into nearly 4,000 science, technology, engineering, and math resources for grades preK–12.
Science
The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco. Its website offers a place where students can explore their curiosity and discover scientific concepts through videos, reading, educational games, and other activities. Students can explore the science of music and dance and the physics of baseball or try to crack the Mayan code. They can watch the dissection of a cow's eye and a sheep's brain, learn how to grow a garden, and play games to improve their memory. This fun, informative website provides a wealth of scientific information that is engaging for young people, parents, and educators alike.
Help your students to understand the debate surrounding the issue of climate change with the EPA's current research, news stories, and multimedia resources that explore shifts in the earth's climate. The agency even created a special site to help students of all ages track the effects of climate change and changing weather patterns around the world.
Also check out From Stargazers to Starships, a high school-level web book that can be used for independent study.
World History
The State Department's fact sheets and country pages provide demographic and economic information, as well as literacy, birth, and death rates and a brief history of the nation's people, culture, and politics.
