Special Offer from C-Span!

Get this huge Presidential Timeline from C-Span - free to teachers and yes, they are including homeschoolers!

 

This is the C-Span Classroom that offers free primary resources to social studies teachers. Under one tab is a list of subjects like Campaigns and Elections, Civil Liberties, Economics, Rule of Law and World History. When you click on a subject, you get a long list of videos relating to that subject. Right now I am listening to Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, where the author of a current book of that title, Dan Okrent, is addressing a group at the Chicago History Museum. It is very interesting so far, in the nature of a lecture. I am browsing through other topic areas and I am seeing a range of videos across the political spectrum. This could be an amazing resource especially for those with jr high and high school students.

There is a pdf on how to use the C-Span video library that details:

The C-SPAN Video Library is a unique, free, and searchable public service that lets you watch C-SPAN programs whenever you want. It records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, media, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987 is contained in the C-SPAN Video Library and is immediately accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by C-SPAN.

Can I just say, WOW? I had no idea that this existed in this form so readily accessible! The pdf goes on to explain exactly how to use clips or parts of clips and how to find specific programs. There are lesson plans and handouts at the C-Span Classroom. These will be designed for classroom use obviously, but you can often get good ideas from plans like these and the handouts could be very useful. Here is one about the Bill of Rights which is essentially just a one page listing of the rights. Here is an interesting one about the Role of the President that includes current events questions.

This website also includes a Congressional Chronicle:

The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle is an index to the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. The video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available. It only includes members who appeared on the floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included here is what the member submitted. Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual remarks.

Last, but not least, is a listing of quite a few other C-Span website including American Presidents: Life Portraits. This was created as a companion to their 20th Anniversary program and so provides links to those programs. This would be a nice adjunct to the free timeline offer.

American History Calendar

From American History Calendar:

This site is devoted to showing American history in a unique way: through a user-friendly web calendar. Birthdays of people in American history as well as events in American history can be viewed using these AJAX enabled calendars. Events can be downloaded and loaded into your iCal compliant calendar program (click on the subscribe link at the bottom of the calendar). There is a print button on the calendar that allows you to create a printer friendly calendar. RSS feeds are also available that display the week's birthdays and events.

The site adds new people and events regularly. There is a History Browser that shows a week with color coded entries. You can scroll weeks forward or back. A map shows related places when appropriate. You can subscribe to the feed, search the site and use their calendar on your computer! Definitely worth a bookmark any year you are studying American History.

BBC's Primary History

Very nicely organized and colorful website for primary history from BBC. Yes, it will have a British slant to it! Never hurts to explore a different perspective, you might learn something!

There are six categories:

• Ancient Greeks
• Romans
• Anglo-Saxons
• Vikings
• Children of Victorian Britain
• Children of World War II

Each includes a neat timeline and various places to explore. These areas could be great resources in other areas of studies. For example, in Children of World War II, there is an area about Evacuation that would be quite helpful in a study of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There is an interesting interactive activity on that page about rationing which starts with a shopping list and helps show what was and wasn't available and what was rationed and a potential sample meal.

Teaching Jane Austen

 The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen is a colorful, informative and well organized treasure trove of suggestions for studying Jane Austen using both books and movies. While it was originally written in conjunction with the 2008 BBC Masterpiece series, it can be used with other Austen adaptations as well.

Here are the Table of Contents:
About This Guide
Why Jane? Why Now?
Austen in the Classroom
Jane Austen’s Life
Miss Austen Regrets
Novel to Film
The Art of Adaptation
Self-Discovery
Persuasion
Sense and Sensibility
Society and the Self
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Satire and Irony
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
Selected Resources

There is enough here to provide a springboard for a semester of study at least. And what a fun time that would be!! Here is a little reminder from the Guide as to why study Jane:

Jane Austen first made her way onto standard U.S. high school and college reading lists because she is a great novelist. She remains there because she has proven herself to be a timeless one. Each generation, including the one that you are now teaching, “rediscovers” Austen.