Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

This is a good biography about Lucy Maud Montgomery. It gives a good, reliable overview biography as well as a listing of her published works.

tag(s): authors (107)

This site contains lesson plans and use suggestions for 5 classic movie favorites. It also has ideas for using those annoying movie previews found on DVDs and links to other sites about specific movies. Lessons include pre-watching activities, vocabulary support, internet exercises, and listening activities, so this site is highly appropriate for use with limited English speakers. Whether you are teaching film study, English, or ESL, this site has ideas for you.

tag(s): movies (54)

This website provides five lesson plans (ranging in grade levels K-12). A brief history of the holiday is provided, followed by five unique lesson plans. How about incorporating math with your Mother's Day lessons (see "Motherhood Math: Mothers in the Workforce"). Lesson plans are aligned with national standards and include language arts, math, technology, visual arts, social studies, and more. These lessons are ready to go and easy to use.

tag(s): mothers day (12), sociology (23), statistics (121)

NPR is amassing a collection of oral histories by traveling across the country and talking to average people. On this website, users can read or listen to the stories told by a wide variety of Americans. Click "Tell your story" to find Locations & Reservations for traveling Mobile Booths or directions to record on your own. The Do It Yourself guide includes tips on interview questions and an interview check list. Started in 2003, the site has many stories in its archives and frequently adds updates.

tag(s): digital storytelling (154), podcasts (110)

Find information on this site, not only for Washington State educators but for all teachers. This site has four Learning Goals that can apply to any student in any state. From the left menu, find resources like Talking to Young People About Race, Racism, and Equity, Open Education Resources, Special Education, Learning Alternatives, and others. Explore Learning Standards by subject and year of adoption.

tag(s): OER (43), racism (79), Special Needs (53)

National Art Education Association is a non-profit, educational organization, promoting art education through professional development, service, advancement of knowledge, and leadership.

A fairly fast moving webquest, this activity nonetheless provides opportunities to delve into the world of utopias. It also bases the evaluation of the final student project on four subject areas: social studies, language arts, art history and science. An Internet link goes to a cyberguide for the novel.

This site features art and cultural information of native Americans, focusing especially on the Eastern Woodlands region. There is information on , Birds & Feathers, Clay & Pottery, Leather & Clothes, Metalwork, Plants & Trees, Porcupine Quills, Stonework & Tools, and Weaving & Cordage. Some of the text passages may be a bit lengthy, but there are also interactive ways for students to get a "hands on" feel, such as with the beadwork interactive game. The sections under Special Features are certain to make the culture come alive for elementary and middle school students.

Take a multi-cultural approach to Day of the Dead celebrations by trying some of these hands-on activities and crafts from Mexico. These would work well as part of a fall festival, multicultural days, or in a Spanish class. The activities include Making a Paper Marigold, a recipe for Bread of the Dead, art projects, and sugar skulls and papier mache floral skulls.

tag(s): spanish (109)

This creative page allows you to add captions to photographs you have uploaded or found on an online site such as Flickr. A collection of your own photos uploaded to Flickr can be used easily.

tag(s): comics and cartoons (55), communication (129), images (263), photography (131)

A delightfully creative, collaborative site where people share (and comment on) directions for "how to" make just about anything. Language Arts, Art, or Gifted classes can "explore" the various topics to see how step-by-step directions are written, then have students write their own sequence of instructions. Even add a digital picture. Topics are "filtered" by topic (on the left side of the "explore" page) and also searchable by keyword. Art teachers will appreciate illustrated explanations of techniques from artists all over the world. This is a collaborative site, so you can read comments made by others on the different sets of instructions. Always preview such a site for appropriate content. Some include Acrobat files of patterns.

tag(s): gifted (66)

This lesson plan provides a way to encourage cultural awareness and make your ENL/ESL students' knowledge of their home culture a classroom asset. The lesson can be done in an all-ENL/ESL class or in a regular class as part of an investigation of cultures, part of a unit on research, or as an art lesson. It can also be adapted for use in a high school level world cultures class.

tag(s): holidays (187)

This site accompanies an exhibition of 4,000 rare books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and ojects focused on the early Americas from the time of the indigenous people of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean through the period of European contact, exploration, and settlement. There is a nice picture gallery of exhibits and a comprehensive bibliography.This site provides some nice visuals for a unit on indiginous peoples of the Americas. The picture gallery has some lovely maps from the Francis Drake expedition, and the information about buccaneers would provide a nice balance to the "Pirates of the Carribean" fantasy depiction of pirates.

tag(s): aztecs (9), explorers (64), mayans (23), spanish (109)

See the many featured, twenty-first century artists and their work in slideshows and hundreds of streaming video clips that accompany the ninth season of this PBS series. The artists speak quite articulately about their creative process and messages they wish to convey.

tag(s): artists (84), creativity (86)

See annotated details of ancient and more recent weavings from many cultures using the interactive "exhibits" of the museum. See work from Egypt, Kashmir, Persia, and many more. Decode some of the iconography in Asian carpets. Some exhibits are text-heavy, while others offer many plates and details for your art students to study and use as references. World cultures classes will be able to envision ancient times by looking at the beautiful images on this site.

tag(s): archeology (28)

Take virtual tour of the famous cave paintings of Lascaux in France, read about their discovery, learn to interpret the drawings, and find out fragile environment of the caves. The site itself is beautiful to explore, letting you experience the caves with a virtual "flashlight" as you enter.

tag(s): archeology (28), painting (54)

Create and collaborate with artists around the web using this online image montage and poetry tool. Each image is an ongoing compilation of other images, arranged in a grid. Add your own images and poetry or simply browse those made by others. Contributors join for free. The images often have surreal appearances and more avant-garde poetry. This site could be a dicussion starter in an art or creative writing class or a study in the diverse uses of web 2.0 collaboration in a computer class.

tag(s): poetry (193)

The tragic story of the lost princess Anastasia is often of interest to students and can serve as an introduction to the story of the Russian Revolution. The Alexander Palace site certainly illustrates the extreme wealth and extravagance of the Romanov court and how this brought about the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism. This site includes everything: diaries and letters, photographs of the palace pets, and information about the life of Tsar Alexander, the last tsar of Russia. Although the level of detail would be very useful for someone doing research into Russian history, the chief benefit of this site for classroom teachers is its photographs of the palace and its treasures. There are photo tours of the palace and each of its rooms. Of particular interest are zoom-able photos of eleven jeweled and decorated Faberge eggs. The site would also be useful for art teachers in illustrating the craftsmanship and beauty of the Faberge eggs, perhaps before asking students to design their own.

tag(s): eggs (5), evolution (89), russia (36), russian (26)

Fireworks as art? Anyone who has watched a fireworks display knows that there's art involved. This lesson shows the considerations of one artist in designing and producing a fireworks display in Washington, DC. The end result is well worth it.

tag(s): fire (22), light (56)

This is the starting page for a collection of articles and lesson plans to accompany the series "How Art Made the World." The programs and lessons examine the use of art to communicate - whether about religion, politics, even advertising - as societies and cultures have developed. Each lesson includes web links to examples, but surprisingly, the site itself lacks much of the visual impact one might expect to find.

tag(s): images (263), propaganda (8)