Web Links to Great Teacher Resources

World History for Us All is a wonderful and innovative model curriculum for teaching world history to middle and high school students, helping teachers meet both state and national standards. It offers “a treasury of teaching units, lesson plans, and resources.”

The Indian Ocean in World History website is a integrated and user-friendly teaching tool for  all students in upper elementary, middle and high school. It offers students the opportunity to investigate primary sources that illustrate historical interactions, helping them to become more accomplished at the analytical historical thing skills that are required by virtually all state history standards today. Map pages and primary sources are available and cover the Prehistoric Era, Ancient Era, Classical Era, Medieval Era, First Global Era, Industrial and Imperial Eras, and the Twentieth Century and Globalization. Finding what you need is easy because the resources and maps fall into eight categories, including documents, technologies, places, good, geographies, routes, travelers, and objects. A model lesson is provided in the Learning Tools menu that suggests ways of interacting with the web site for an individual, small group, or whole class engagement. Note taking organizers can be downloaded as well.

The Pulitzer Center promotes in- depth engagement with global affairs and focuses on under-reported crises and issues throughout the world. For teachers, it contains lesson plans like one on Youth and Education in Afghanistan. Their Student Voices section is great for students to read about Iraqi refugees in Syria, hear Kenyan students tell about what water means to them, and watch a video about young former indentured servants in Nepal. This site is probably more for students in ninth through twelfth grade.

The site Global Issues has an amazing set of essays and resources on many of the world’s major global issues and problems. Created by Anup Shah, the site offers his essays that cover topics such as global worming, the East Africa food crisis, causes of poverty, and Middle East and northern Africa unrest. This would be a wonderful site for students research on global issues and world problems. It is also a good site for teachers to learn about these topics more broadly and in depth.

Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present.There are more than 300 annotated primary sources focused on children and youth throughout world history for one to explore, along with case studies and teaching modules.

Women in World History, created by Lyn Reese, has lesson plans ranging from women in ancient Mesopotamia to issues such as “Women and Veiling” and “Married Women’s Property Rights.” Other sections focus on biographies of women throughout history, and a section titled “Connecting Women to the Silk Roads,” which describes how women participated with men during this era. Even boys in the classroom will find things that will interest them and broaden their understanding.

Teacher Oz’s Kingdom of History is a great website where you will find an extraordinary large set of links to just about every topic in world and U.S. history. The coverage of ancient civilization is very extensive and deals with topics such as biography, African Americans, Native Americans, and women in history.

Sid the Science Kid- Sense is a game for students to play match the object being shown with the senses they are told to use.

The Library of Congress has millions of primary sources available for free online. Teaching with primary sources is powerful way to help students engage with content, build their critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge.

Yad Vashem, The International School for Holocaust Studies, offers a nice collection of online education materials about the Jewish Holocaust.