Students will explore the web to answer their questions about Robert Smalls and the Civil War. Then they will assemble a digital slideshow of their findings.
In this resource, students can explore jazz through listening activities, interviews with musicians, and background information on SmithsonianJazz.org. Students can also hone their skills at analyzing oral histories with a collection of over fifty recordings of jazz composers, arrangers, and performers.
Students will locate, explore, and photograph evidence of maritime activities affecting them and/or their community, write a detailed description about the effect of the activities, and share both photographs and descriptions online.
Students will play the role of newspaper reporters in order to research, write, and publish an article about the history of the Star-Spangled Banner. This is connected with the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.
Students will learn that archaeologists use historic photographs to interpret archaeological sites and artifacts. They will use observation, inference, and comparing skills to interpret a historic photograph.
Students will identify and analyze the historical data found within two newspapers reporting on Robert Smalls and the CSS Planter.
Students will take a close look at an object that was made by an immigrant who came to the United States. Then children will consider important moments in their family history. This resource is connected with the Smithsonian Musuem.
Students will assume the role of fictional Americans in 1963 and make decisions based on the evidence found in a historical artifact related to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In this resource, students explore the role buffaloes played in the lives of Native Americans of the northern Plains. The website includes: online interactives, printable activities and a map of the Plain Indians, information about the art of buffalo hide paintings, a teacher's guide and student worksheets, and a bibliography of related books and online resources appropriate for all ages.
Students will find and explore a local place that is connected to trains, such as a train station, a train museum, or train tracks. This is connect with the Smithsonian Museums.
In these lessons, students learn a traditional Chinese folktale and examine a contemporary artwork that’s based on it. The work, Xu Bing’s Monkeys Grasp for the Moon, is an installation made up of the word monkey in more than a dozen languages. Students create their own word-based works. This set of four lessons is divided into grades K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12. Younger students arrange cut-out letters into a picture. Older students create an animation.
Students will analyze images of tools that were used on rice plantations to determine each tool's purpose. These objects can tell us a great deal about slavery and the lives of the slaves who worked on rice plantations.
In this unit, students will be introduced the first major clash in the Civil War the Battle of Bull Run and encourage students to consider the perspectives of ordinary citizens of the North and the South and the impact of this battle on their lives.
This resource looks at the history of voting methods in the United States, which are as varied as the individual states and their local election districts. It explores how ballots and voting systems have evolved over the years as a response to political, social, and technological change, transforming the ways in which Americans vote.
Students will use Google Maps to first find your school, and then find and learn about the closest body of water to your school.
In this interactive game, students explore the changes in America transportation over time as they match a variety of vehicles with their destinations and time periods. This interactive is included in the online exhibition entitled America on the Move, which focuses on transportation in US history.
Students will use three Web sites to gather data about the people in their home state and those who represent them in Congress, then use an online tool to visually compare the data.
In this resource, students can explore the American presidency and elections in these four activities from Smithsonian Education’s Art to Zoo. Each of the four activities focuses on a different skill in social studies: examining maps, using timelines, studying collections, and using primary sources.
Students can enjoy exploring the history of the women's suffrage movement and women's role in civic life today. Focused on actively reading Mama Went to Jail for the Vote, a historical fiction picture book about the women's suffrage movement, this module also includes links to a hands-on activity, field trip, object-based learning experience, and technology exploration.
Students will review one or more compositions by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., identify meaningful words and phrases, and create word art using the Wordle Web site.