Title: Smithsonian Learning Lab: Discover, Create, Share Annotation: Resources for educators, curriculum developers, librarians / media specialists, museum educators, learners, and parents. Resources include images, audio, video, text, lesson plans, and more. Collections include social studies, language arts, science, art, and more. Use: As supplementary material for any classroom. Searching: Searching searches the entire Smithsonian Learning Lab.
Government Resources
Title: Welcome to AgLab | AgLab
Annotation: Learn about nutrition, food safety, animal health, insects, organics, and sustainability through videos and articles. It also offers science projects to complete in the classroom (if possible). Great to use as a supplement to a lesson. Use: Aligns with Massachusetts Science Technology and Engineering standards and MA Comprehensive Health and PE framework. Searching: Searches all USDA
Title: Home | Driving excellence in humanities education
About: "EDSITEment is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for the Humanities." Annotation: A compilation of resources, lesson plans, curriculum, and teacher's guides for humanities education in history and social studies, literature and language arts, foreign languages, arts, and culture. Use: Aligns with Massachusetts History and Social Science framework, English Language Arts and Literacy framework, and Massachusetts Arts framework. Searching: Searching searches within EDSITEment.
Title: Ready Kids Annotation: Website available in multiple languages and can be filtered by kids, teens, families, and educators / organizations. Website provides games, ideas, planning tools, and more for disaster recovery. Use: Loosely supports the Massachusetts Science Technology and Engineering standards for grade 7 and High School. Would be best for classrooms where natural disasters are more likely to happen. Does include story books that would work well with Elementary students learning about safety. Searching: Searching searches the entirety of ready.gov not just the Ready Kids section.
Title: History and Education Annotation: Provides resources for what copyright is, how to use it, how to apply for it, and the history of copyright. Each section delves deeper in the topic which includes PDFs and videos. Use: Geared toward older students. Would use for grades 8–12 under the Massachusetts School Library Association standards, specifically under 4c. Ethical Behavior in Information Use. Searching: Searches the entirety of copyright.gov.
Title: Native American Heritage Month For Teachers Annotation: A plethora of resources from the Library of Congress, National Archives, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Serivce, Smithsonian Institute, and Smithsonian Folklife Magazine. Links include information, lessons, and more. Use: Aligns with Massachusetts and Social Science Framework for grades 3, 9–12. Searching: There is no search. You need to click into each link to see what is in the resource.
Title: Education Resources | Coin Classroom
Annotation: Teachers can find K–6 activities, lesson plans, and videos to teach math and financial concepts. Use: Aligns with Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum for grades 1, 2, 4. Searching: Searching searches within the Coin Classroom beyond the Educational Resources.
Title: Space Math @ NASA Annotation: A collection of math problems relating to space. Each math problem lists the grade level next to it. Math problems are on printable PDFs for classroom sharing. Use: Connects with Massachusetts Curriculum Framework grades 3–12 and Massachusetts Technology and Engineering standards 9–12. Searching: It does not have a search feature, but you can sort by space science topics, grade level, NASA mission, and Engineering topics.
Title: Space Math @ NASA Annotation: An archived collection of math problems related to space. Can sort math problems by space scientific topic, grade level, NASA Mission, and Engineering Topics. Each math problem has listed grade levels. Use: Connects with Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework for grades 3–12. Searching:
Title: Teaching Climate Annotation: A collection of climate and energy resources reviewed by educators and scientists. Collection materials connect to https://cleanet.org/ which is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA. Contains a Global Climate Dashboard to investigate Earth warming trends though graphs, maps, and additional data. Cleanet.org contains lesson plans for all grade levels. Use: Climate.gov aligns with Massachusetts Science Technology and Engineering standards for grades 9–12. Cleanet.org aligns with Massachusetts Science Technology and Engineering standards for grades K–12. Searching: Searching searches within climate.gov and provides guessing terms when you are searching.
Title: Welcome to Federal Reserve Education! Annotation: Contains materials for classroom use, professional development, and a glossary of terms. Resources include infographics & comics, lessons & activities, storybooks, and videos & QA. Resources can be downloaded and printed or ordered. Use: Connects with the Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework for grades K–4, but includes lessons for K–12+. Searching: You can preform quick searches though topic tags. Searching brings results form Federal Reserve Education.
Title: Educators Annotation: Contains lesson plans, articles, and images of artifacts that relate to the chosen topic. There is a lot of content, but lesson plans can be searched by theme, time period, and state. Use: For K-12+ language arts, math, science, and social studies. The resources contain a lot of reading and would be best used in conjunction with a lesson and not as the only resource. Searching: The search feature searches all of the Educators materials, but there is a lot. You are able to filter the search by subject, grade level, and common core standard.
Title: For Educators Annotation: Contains resource collections for aeronautics and flight, Earth science, Earth's moon, Earth and climate, Eclipse, Solar System and beyond, STEM on station, and the sun. Each collection is able to be filtered by teacher and student use, grade level, subject, and type of resource. Use: Connects with Massachusetts Science Technology and Engineering standards for grades K-12. Searching: Searching searches the entire NASA site which brings a lot of results.
Title: Resources for Parents, Teachers and Students Annotation: Contains sources for using the Metric System for scientific and mathematical purposes. Teachers can request a free set of metric education resources for classroom use. Provides data on object weight estimations for quick reference and the Periodic Table. An explanation on what SI (International System of Units, aka Metric System) is with many examples from multiple sources. It also includes the proper formatting on how to write using the Metric System. It even provides educational resources for teaching Metric and professional development for teachers. Use: A great resource to utilize for science or math classes. While it does not contain lesson plans, it does provide explanation and understanding of a measurement system used internationally for scientific processes. Searching: Searching searches the entire NIST website, not just the educational section. There are a lot of sub-pages so finding information, or seeing the breadth of what is available takes some exploring.
Title: (Home Page) Start exploring hundreds of free resources. Annotation: A comprehensive free civic resources for teachers for grades K-12 with lesson plans, videos, curriculum units, games, DBQuests, WebQuests, and more. Also provides professional development. Allows resources to be filtered by connections with Google slides, Kami, and PDFs along with Pedagogy Tags, time restraints, and technology access. Use: Lessons are assigned grade levels and you can search by state for curriculum connections for each resource. Searching: Searching finds results from the entire site. The website is well designed and organized to be able to find what you are looking for through browsing. Bias: iCivics was founded in 2009 by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
Title: Educational Resources Annotation: Resources to learn about federal courts, civil discourse, and the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth amendment as they relate to students. Use: Best for grades 8–12 as it connects with Massachusetts History and Social Science standards for court decisions and amendments. Gives background and examples for real court cases to conduct classroom versions of trials. Searching: Navigating to activities can be a little confusing as you need to click into the topic page where you get information about the topic, and then must find the link to the activity page which will contain more resources. When using the search feature it searches the entire United States Court website.
Title: Statistics in Schools Annotation: Provides Math, English, History, Geography, and Sociology resources that connect with statistics for grades K–12, with lessons being able to be filtered by grade level under each category. Lessons were created by teachers so each lesson contains Bloom’s Taxonomy, Subject, Topics, and Skills Taught. Each lesson has a teacher and student downloads, suggested grade levels, and when it was last updated. Use: Connects with Massachusetts State History and Social Science grades 4–12 and Math Curriculum grades 6–12 standards. Searching: Searching searches within Statistics in Schools (SIS)
Title: Resources for Educators Annotation: Pre-K–12 environmental resources for teachers that link to external organizations. Lessons include worksheets, videos, and games. While the content is from Canada, a lot of the resources are about climate science that affects everyone. We are also within the same hemisphere as Canada making the lessons relevant to our area. Use: A lot of resources from different organizations for different environmental topics. Bonus, a lot of the content is presented in both English and French. Connects with MA State Earth science standards for Pre-K–12. Searching: Searching uses Canada.ca which does not help you look for specific resources, but the Resources for Educators does allow you to filter content by subject, type of material, and / or grade level. Tags: Science, Earth Science, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Title: Field Trips & Resources Annotation: Information on in-person and virtual field trips for grades 3–5. Also has lesson plans for plant life cycles for K–5. Includes plans on how to create a school garden and greenhouses for student programs for Pre-K–12. Use: Connects with MA State Earth science standards for Pre-K–8. Searching: Resources are limited to one page. Searching brings resources and articles from the entire site.
Title: Education and Training Annotation: Provides K-12 educational resources for Arctic and Antarctic, Astronomy and space, Biology, Chemistry, Computing, Earth and environment, Engineering, Materials science, Mathematics, People and society, Physics, and Technology. Use: K-12 science and math
Title: US Government Documents Fundamentals: Evaluating documents Annotation: How to evaluate Government documents and websites, addressing accuracy and reliability, watchdog groups, and political fact-checking. Use: 6-12
Title: Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Annotation: Describes what the CIPA is and how it effects schools if they do not have an internet safety policy. Use: Teachers and administration
Title: Finding Primary Sources for Teachers and Students Annotation: Gives a list of government sites for finding primary sources for teachers and students. Use: 6-12, Research