K-12 Education Content Areas

Timetoast: create your own historical timeline or browse the site's timelines.  Share your timeline on the web.

These subscription databases link to information about children's books, reviews of the books, and the grade/interest/reading levels for the book.  Sometimes lesson plans are also included.

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database: information about fiction and non-fiction children's literature.

Novelist K-8 Plus: information about fiction and non-fiction for primary years through adolescence, including reading levels, lesson plans, & book reviews.

Novelist Plus: book reviews, age levels, and additional information about fiction and nonfiction.

Education Research Complete: articles from education magazines and journals, including lesson plans, author bios, and lengthy articles about themes in children's literature.

I have carefully selected these lesson plan web sites using the following criteria:

1. They are free.
2. They are tied to national standards, sometimes Common Core and state standards.
3. An assessment or evaluation component is included.
4. Suggested resources, handouts, or links are present.

NCSS Social Studies Trade Books for Young People: literature for grades K-8 that "emphasize human relations, represent a diversity of groups and are senstivie to a broad range of cultural experiences" and are "easily readable and of high literary quality" (NCSS web site)

ReadWriteThink: Lesson plans from the International Reading Association that include "before reading," "during reading," and "after reading" stages; and ideas for assessment, links to standards, extension ideas, and a section that relates reading instruction theory to practice.

Children's & Young Adult Literature Resources: click on "diverse reads," and select a culture to see the books listed.  The site's mission is to "to serve young readers, teachers, librarians, child caregivers, undergraduate and graduate students, university professors, writers, and literature enthusiasts of all stripes"

Cooperative Children's Book Center: covers all grade levels and subject areas; booklists include books about family, social justice, peace, justice, and multiculturalism.

LiLI Databases: Portal to articles and eBooks, accessible to all Idaho citizens.  Type your keywords in the text box, e.g. holocaust danish resistance.

JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive:  Articles from journals in history, anthropology, arts, science, education, business, and much more; most journals are indexed back several decades. 

America: History & Life: Articles from journals covering North American history; full-text available for most of the articles indexed.

Historical Abstracts: Articles about history in regions outside of North America; full-text available for most of the articles indexed.

Civil Rights Digital Library: Online films, texts, images, and audio from direct 1950s and 1960s sources.

Folkstreams: Online documentary films featuring American folk culture; includes essays, transcriptions, and teaching & study guides.

Free eBook!

Online Resources for Teaching IB DP Geography: 16 Free Online Resources for Teaching Patterns and Change, by Richard Allaway

Step 1: Now that you've generated a list of questions you'd like to explore, it's time to begin finding relevant information.  Read the following explanation of the CRAAP criteria for evaluating information resources.  Follow this link to a website that outlines CRAAP.

Step 2: Using the worksheet provided, apply the CRAAP criteria to each of the following websites in order to evaluate them for academic use:

• Native American Housing
• The Iroquois of the Northeast