Joanne Prettyman

SLM 521

Elective #12 – Instruction

Lesson Plans

The following are five different web sites that have teacher made lesson plans centering on Social Studies lessons and units of study. They are not ranked in any particular order – as I found all of them equally useful for our courses and courses in history! Enjoy – and feel free to use any and/or all!

ü PBS Colonial House Series

This series of lesson plans focuses on the PBS production of “Colonial House.” But, conveniently enough, can be used with our without the video series. I found this to be a wonderful site for numerous lesson plans regarding colonial life in America. The “clincher” - real people willingly transporting themselves “back to the future” and not for reality television purposes or big cash prizes – but, just for the love of history!

By the way – we do have this video in our department video library!

Also, check out this internal PBS Colonial House Search Engine.

ü PBS Frontier House Series

This series of lesson plans focuses on the PBS production of “Frontier House.” But, conveniently enough, can be used with our without the video series. I found this to be a wonderful site for numerous lesson plans regarding life on the American frontier and colonizing that frontier. The “clincher” - real people willingly transporting themselves “back to the future” and not for reality television purposes or big cash prizes – but, just for the love of history!

By the way – we do have this video in our department video library!

Also, check out this internal PBS Frontier House Search Engine.

ü Mr. Donn’s Pages

WOW! Mr. Donn, whoever you are, wherever you are…thank you! This site is chocked full of any and all types of lesson plans a teacher could possibly use. While the site doesn’t just focus on History – I felt it to be a wonderful resource for all members of our Social Studies department.

The site is all Social Studies and English related but, you must navigate to find age and grade appropriate levels of lessons/units. The site also contains links to games, resources, clip art, and free “stuff” for teachers and students!

ü The Library of Congress

A teacher cannot go wrong visiting the Library of Congress! This is an excellent page to retrieve lesson/unit plans from. The page offers the teacher different resources for constructing lessons out of primary source documents, it lists lesson plan retrieval by theme or by topic, it gives the user access to activities, collections, special features, and events to link the community and the classroom. This is an awesome site!

ü Discovery School

Another excellent site! Discovery School has set up a resource of amazing lesson/unit plans for the Social Studies teacher. The site is broken down into subject matter (the URL I’ve linked you with is for history) and age/grade level. The site also has teaching tools, a teachers’ store, custom classroom designs, curriculum centers, homework helpers, clip art galleries, puzzle makers, and so on and so on! Good “stuff’ for teachers!

I could go on and on for pages…but, I won’t! Use the search engines and/or sites below and find many, many more lesson plans for yourself!

PBS in your classroom

PBS History – specifically search for “1940s House!”

The Best History Web Sites

All information was taken from the above web sites.