Five Friday Finds

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Often, finding good web resources are the hardest part of the job for an educator.  With all the demands on a teacher's time, who has time to spend searching?  If this is you, here are some resources you may found useful.  Please feel free to share with others!

General-
Teachers' Domain: http://www.teachersdomain.org/
"Teachers' Domain is a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. You’ll find thousands of media resources, support materials, and tools for classroom lessons, individualized learning programs, and teacher professional learning communities."  This is a NSF funded project that currently is being updated quite regularly.

Math-
Basic Algebra Wikibook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Basic_Algebra
Great resource for students.  Each "lesson" has vocabulary, lesson, example problems, practice games and practice problems.  This is part of an entire Algebra series that are all linked here.

Science-
Chemical Education Digital Library: http://www.chemeddl.org/
“Welcome to ChemEd DL! Here you will find exemplary digital resources, tools, and online services—your 24:7 aid for teaching and learning chemistry. A collaborative, community-driven effort, ChemEd DL is the place for sharing your work and benefitting from what others have done."

Social Studies-
Ripped from the Headlines: How to Turn Current Events into Read World Projects: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/real-world-projects-news-events-suzie-boss?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29
"[U]se the news as a launching pad for in-depth student learning....[D]ive into topics for which there are no texts or guidebooks. How do you plan for academically rigorous projects that are "ripped from the headlines"? Here are a few suggestions, along with some timely resources. "

Economics-
Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?hp
Interactive site from the New York Times puts students in charge of making decisions about tax increases & spending cuts to decrease the federal deficit.  A graphic at the top instantly changes with their choices to show the impact of each decision.

Thanksgiving Bonus-
The First Thanksgiving Student Activities for Grades PreK-12: http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/
Scholastic's website includes lesson plans, activities, printables, a virtual fieldtrip, videos, slideshows & more about the first Thanksgiving.

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