Humanities, Arts, World Languages Specific Resources

Humanities, Arts, World Languages Specific Resources

Jason Reynolds' Grab the Mic Series and Write. Right. Rite. video series

Jason Reynolds (acclaimed and award-winning author and poet) is now entering his third year as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature (lucky us)! If you haven't already checked out what he's doing with his ambassadorship, now's the time.  His focus has been on helping young people to tell their own stories and find connection and understanding through the sharing of those stories.  He's got educator guides and some fun and engaging writing prompts to inspire you and your students.

Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage: Masters of Tradition

This interactive story map allows students to explore the great diversity of cultures, communities, and artistic traditions that enrich the United States. Through abundant photographs, audio, video, short text, and first-person quotes, the story map addresses a variety of key themes, including immigration, migration, identity, heritage, and community. (from ALA best sites)

News Literacy Project

Incredibly rich and powerful bank of tools and resources for teaching students concepts around information and media literacy.  Includes lesson plans, interactive lessons, videos, and more.  Free subscription for educators.

World 101

From the Council on Foreign Relations: World 101 offers information from independent non-partisan sources about international relations. Explore by region or global era issues - essays, videos, discussion questions, glossaries, and up-to-date reading lists provide comprehensive teaching resources for each module.

Pulitzer Center

The Pulitzer Center offers a wide array of international news stories and reporting - freely accessible on their site.  They also provide lesson plans and opportunities for Skype visits and workshops with their reporters.

The New York Times: The Learning Network

The Times has put together a collection of visual thinking strategies exercises, writing prompts, lessons, and more working around articles found in the paper.  There's  a lot of great stuff to explore here.  

Spark Creativity

Former high school teacher, Betsy Potash offers a wide range of creative ideas for engaging students through literature and art.  Check out the curriculum resources on her website, listen to her creative ideas in her podcast, read the blog or connect with other teachers through her Facebook group.

DocsTeach

This online tool from the National Archives gives teachers a way to create and build lessons around specific resources in the National Archives.

Epic! Books

Sign up for a free educator account and provide your "classroom code" to students.  This site provides access to some 40,000 ebooks, audiobooks, and "read-to-me" books. It's a mix of popular titles and "Epic Originals" - even includes about 3,000 books in French, Spanish, and Chinese.  Another awesome way to give students options for reading!

Teaching Books

This site provides access to book lists, lesson ideas, discussion guides, recordings of author talks and excerpts of audiobooks, videos, book trailers, and much more.  Lots of great tools to help you build thoughtful, resource-rich, customized book lists for your classes, and get your students excited about reading.

Unite For Literacy

Students can read simple texts/picture books in English or Spanish or read along in English while listening in a wide range of languages.

Storyweaver

A great resource for reading simple e-books (at four different levels of complexity) in a wide range of languages. Filtered search options help you find just what you're looking for.

Digital Dialects

It isn't the prettiest website, but it offers some fun, simple games and activities to help students practice language and vocabulary in a large number of languages.

Once Upon a Time (https://www.iletaitunehistoire.com/)

Students can read fables, legends, nursery rhymes, and more through this French website.

Databases through the CHS Library:

From Vermont Online Library

A few highlights below...see the whole list of databases here.

BOOKS & AUTHORS

Answer the age-old question, “What do I read next?” Search and match reading interests to books, authors, genres, or topics. 

NEWS

Access major U.S. and international newspapers online to search articles instantly by title, headline, date, or other fields. (VOL)

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues. (VOL)

DIVERSITY STUDIES

Access a range of periodical content to explore cultural differences, contributions, and influences in the global community.  

From FactCite: The Lincoln Library

These are new to us this fall - see below for information on these four new databases.

COUNTRIES & CULTURES

Explore countries all over the world with basic statistics and analysis of geography, history, economy, people, flora/fauna, etc.

(FactCite)

DEFINING MOMENTS IN U.S. HISTORY

Articles relating to specific moments and eras in U.S. history - search by era, topic, and more - easily link to additional information/resources.

LibGuides

A host of LibGuides have already been created by the CHS Library staff (past and present), and Ms. Binder's always ready to create some more to support your next unit of study.  Just send an email to request this service.  You can check out a few examples below, or peruse the entire list of existing LibGuides to see what might be of use to you and your students now.  

Students can use their CSD username (firstname.lastname) and password to access tutorials and practices for a range of Humanities skills.