Ideas and Resources for the Remote Teaching & Learning of Social Studies
Ideas and Resources
In an effort to provide educators with support during statewide closure of K-12 public schools, NCDPI K-12 Social Studies has organized ideas, examples, and resources for the remote teaching and learning of social studies. Please note that these are not lessons, but ideas and resources to springboard plans for instruction. Teachers may need to adapt these ideas to align with specific grade-level standards.
*Note: This information does not supersede the recommendations of local curriculumm offices and school boards. The inclusion of ideas and/or resources found here does not constitute endorsement or verification by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.Virtual Field Trips
Virtual Field Trips & Tours
Discovery Education Virtual Field Trips
Teachers and students can engage in live Virtual Field Trips or watch them on demand. Each Virtual Field Trip comes with a companion guide and hands-on learning activities.
Students will take a virtual field trip to the U.S. Census Bureau to learn more about how census data is collected and used.
While the actual Constitution Center is temporarily closed to the public, you can still take a virtual tour of the Center as well as explore the Interactive Constitution.
Colonial Williamsburg has collections of interactive timelines and videos of their re-enactors that can be viewed by anyone to experience life in colonial America.
Join the National Park Service and Scholastic for this virtual field trip to explore the history of immigration from Ellis Island.
Students can travel to cities all over the world through this crowd-sourced collection of panoramic photos of building and sites in cities big and small.
Explore the most visited site in China from your own home. This virtual tour is a great way to see highlights along the wall, since it spans more than 3000 miles.
Explore life on Easter Island as well as the ingenious methods used to erect and move the statues for which the island is famous.
This site has lots of information about Ancient Egypt, but the virtual tours of pyramids and temples are the highlights for field trips.
33 National Park Tours you can virtually visit. Yes, that means you can explore National Parks from the comfort of your home and in your pajamas!
Virtual Tour of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Explore the FDR museum and visit the exhibits that show the lives of the Roosevelts, WWII, the New Deal, and the Great Depression.
Virtual Tour of Historical London
Take a 360 degree tour of the Westminster Cathedral, 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, Old Sessions House, Clerkenwell, and more!
Stonehenge Virtual Tour: Inside the Stones
Virtual Visitors will be able to take an interactive 360 degree tour from inside of Stonehenge. Visitors can click on dots to learn more about the monument's history, structure, etc.
This online virtual tour enables visitors to interactively explore the Taj Mahal at Agra in India.
3D Mekanlar which has castles you can virtually explore all over the world including Bayern, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.
3D Mekanlar has virtual tours of towers all over the world including the Eiffel Tower, Kuwait Towers, and Atomium Tower of Brussels.
Online Museum Exhibits
NC Museum of History: History at Home!
Experience the the museum by exploring exhibits, engaging in the collections, tuning into a podcast, etc.
British Museum: The Museum of the World
This site allows virtual visitors to explore artifacts from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceana from various periods in history. Visitors can click on a dot in the timeline and learn about the artifact.
Holocaust Museum Online Exhibits
Explore several different online exhibits including Anne Frank, Nazi Propaganda, Nazi Book Burning, and several more.
Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global black experience. Users can find exhibits on the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.
Interactive virtual tour of George Washington’s home.
Smithsonian Natural History Museum
This national site hosts past and current exhibits at the Smithsonian .
National WWI Museum Online Exhibits
These online exhibits engage audiences in remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community
The National WWII Museum in New Orleans
The Online Learning Series allows an unprecedented look into the Museum's collection for those World War II enthusiasts the Museum can't always reach in person.
National Archives Online Exhibits
The National Archives is the nation's record keeper. Type in your topic and explore hundreds of exhibits.
Video Gallery
History
A historian studies and writes about the past. Historians study what others have written about a particular subject and use source material to build a new interpretations or follow new insights.
Whose knowledge is this?
Where did this knowledge base come from?
Whom might this knowledge (or perspective) benefit?
What perspectives are missing?
What conclusions can be drawn from the evidence?
Examples:
For one week, have your students journal every day about what they are seeing in the world around them. This might be what they see in the news, hear from friends and family, or anything else that they experience in their daily life. Have students consider:
~What major announcements happened day from both the local, state and national governments?
~What unique talents do you have as a student to record your thoughts about what happened today? (drawing, poetry, notes, photos, etc)
~What changes can you as a student jot down to show the difference in how you and others around you are living your daily lives now as opposed to one month ago? (Change over time)
After your week of journaling use your notes and journal entry to help you create a timeline for the things you have observed over the past 5 days. When your class gets together online or over the phone talk share and compare your timeline with others. If you are unable to connect with classmates in an online environment, discuss your timeline with family and friends you talk with over the phone.
Resources:
Geography
A geographer studies interactions, interconnections and implications of natural environments and human society.
Where are things located?
Why are they located where they are?
How do people interact with the environment?
What are the implications?
Examples:
To help your students better understand the different roles that geography plays in their life, have students:
Use Google Maps, a North Carolina Atlas & Gazetteer, or any map/atlas identify their home and their destination on the map using latitude and longitude for both.
Identify at least one physical feature (river, mountain, lake, etc) and one human feature (city, building, bridge, etc.) and determine how far away they are from their start place.
Measure how many miles away the destination is from their home both in a straight line and by using major roads.
Imagine traveling to the destination and follow along on the map to determine what towns, cities, states, and countries they would travel through during their trip. Identify other major landmarks (both human and physical) that they might see along the way.
Discuss how building the roads that they would travel on changed the land and where the roads had to go around or over the environment.
Think about what type of things in their lives (food, toys, clothes, books, etc) rely on the roads in order to get to the stores where we buy them.
Resources:
Economics
An economist studies the production and distribution of resources, goods, and services by collecting and analyzing data, researching trends, and evaluating economic issues. Economists also interpret and forecast market trends.
How will societies, governments, business, and people use an allocate resources?
How does data support trends, patterns or forecast warnings for the economy, society, etc.?
What impact will economic decisions have on societies, governments, business, and people?
What policies or laws are needed to solve economic problems?
Examples:
Create a list of everything that they would like to spend money on and in their list identify the following:
What things are goods and what are services.
Ask the student to determine how much all of the items on the list cost. (Family members can support younger students by helping them figure out the cost of items.)
Give the student a budget. This budget should preferably cover the cost of most/all of the needs, but not enough to cover the cost of everything on the list. (Older students can look at careers and hour wages to determine what type of income they can expect in different careers with a 40 hr work week.)
Have students decide what their budget looks like and how they plan to save/invest for the future based on what their needs and wants are now.
Resources:
Civics & Government
A political scientist studies the origin, development, and operation of political systems. They research political ideas and analyze the structure and operation of governments, policies, political trends, and related issues. According to the Six Proven Practices for Effective Civic Learning, understanding Civics and Government is about more than knowing how a bill becomes a law and getting people to vote and should not be taught as such.
How do political systems impact behavior?
What political theories or ideologies govern a society?
How do policies and laws impact government, businesses, and people?
Is the government operating efficiently and effectively?
What political trends exist?
Examples:
Things in which students can engage outside the classroom:
Watch current daily Covid-19 news briefings of the governor, mayor, and president to determine who the various state, local, and national officials are who are involved in providing expert information and guidance during the Covid-19 crisis.
Over the course of 5 days keep a journal entry of a T-chart which, on the left side lists the types of things you hear, read, and observe about the responsibilities of individuals to follow rules and laws of the local, state, and national community, and on the right side lists the types of things you hear, read, and observe about the state, local, and national government's responsibilities to ensure the safety of individuals.
Have students think about their local community, take a walk around their neighborhood, and/or speak with parents, friends, and neighbors about what they like about their community. Based on the information students gather have them come up with ideas about what they would like to see change or remain the same. Have students then jot down ideas of how they might get involved in helping to try to bring awareness to the community about the things they would like to see changed. (Younger students will need additional support in identifying appropriate topics.)
Help your parent or guardian read and fill out the 2020 Census questionnaire. Research to find out all of the ways the census is used and why it is important.
Resources:
Culture
The study of culture examines the beliefs, values, behaviors, traditions, and ways of life of a group within society. It also encompasses cultural attributes, such as language, literature, music, arts and artifacts, and food. A cultural anthropologist studies the origin, development and behavior of humans in order to develop new and more effective social policies. Students will be able to understand diverse perspectives on the concepts of race, ethnicity, culture, and nationality.
What role does culture play in human and societal development?
What are common characteristics across cultures?
How does culture change and accommodate various belief systems and ideas?
Examples:
Make a list of at least 10 people to interview by phone, in person, email, internet, or social media. Talk with each person to ask questions about things they do in their families, ways they celebrate birthdays, holidays, or other events. Ask about the types of activites they do on weekends and during the summer. Ask them to tell you some of the traditions they may have in their families. Feel free to add as many more questions as you can think of asking. When you have gotten information from all people make a table with a row for each person and a column for each question. Put your information in the table you create and then analyze to make some comparisons and draw some conclusions. Write a short summary of what you conclude.
Creating a chart of the ways in which lifestyles, beliefs, and struggles contribute to building culture in the United States.
Research ways in which gender, class, religion, language, ethnicity, values, and beliefs impact the roles of people within the major civilizations.
Create a timeline about how individuals, groups, and social systems have influenced the development of North Carolina and the nation.
Resources:
Historical Thinking (Skill Development)
Chronology
Chronological thinking is at the heart of historical reasoning. Without a strong sense of chronology–of when events occurred and in what order–it is impossible for students to examine and understand relationships among those events or to explain historical causality. Chronology provides the mental scaffolding for organizing historical thought in order to understand cause and effect (e.g., event A happened before event B, Y was a result of X) and change over time.
Distinguish between past, present, and future time.
Students can create a timeline depicting about an event in their own life or an historical event.
Students can divide a timeline into three distinct periods based on significant events or their own personal experiences.
Students can practice interpreting data presented in time lines and create time lines.
Identify the structure of a historical narrative or story: its beginning, middle, and end.
Students can practice reconstructing the chronology of the factors and causes leading to a major event.
Students can practice analyzing the purpose, meaning, and significance of a major document (speech, story, letter, diary entry, picture, political cartoon, graphic novel, etc.)
Resources:
Analyzing and Interpreting Information
Analysis builds upon the skills of comprehension; it obliges the student to assess the evidence on which the historian has drawn and determine the soundness of interpretations created from that evidence.
Students can compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions by identifying likenesses and differences.
Students can engage in activities which allow them to consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past by demonstrating their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears.
Students should have opportunities to analyze cause-and-effect relationships keeping in mind multiple causation including (a) the importance of the individual in history; (b) the influence of ideas, human interests, and beliefs; and (c) the role of chance, the accidental and the irrational.
Students should practice drawing comparisons across eras and regions in order to define enduring issuesas well as large-scale or long-term developments that transcend regional and temporal boundaries.
Resources:
Historical Comprehension : Sourcing
Sourcing asks students to consider who wrote a document as well as the circumstances of its creation. When thinking about sourcing of a document, some questions to ask would be:
Who wrote this?
What is the author’s perspective?
Why was it written?
When was it written?
Where was it written?
Is this source reliable? Why? Why not?
Student Examples:
Given a source, students could describe who created it, why they created it, and how that might influence the perspective or bias of the source.
Resources:
Historical Comprehension : Contextualization
Contextualization asks students to locate a document in time and place and to understand how these factors shape its content. When thinking about contextualization of a document, some questions to ask would be:
When and where was the document created?
By whom was the document created?
Who was the audience for the document?
What was different then?
What was the same?
How might the circumstances in which the document was created affect its content?
Student Examples:
Given a document (possibly from the collection of the Library of Congress) a student could answer the above questions concerning the document
With a political cartoon, students could explain who the intended audience was and why the cartoon was created at the time it was created.
Resources:
Corroboration
Corroboration asks students to consider details across multiple sources to determine points of agreement and disagreement. When thinking about corroboration of different documents, some questions to ask would be:
What do other documents say?
Do the documents agree? If not, why?
What are other possible documents?
What documents are most reliable? Why?
What really happened based on the documents?
Student Example:
Students are given multiple documents concerning the same event (i.e. The Boston Massacre, The Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem, etc.) and asked to describe what really happened based on the corroboration between the documents.
Resources:
Close Reading
The Close Reading Protocol strategy asks students to carefully and purposefully read and reread a text. When students “close read,” they focus on what the author has to say, what the author’s purpose is, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells us.
The close reading helps students evaluate sources and analyze rhetoric by asking them:
• What claims does the author make?
• What evidence does the author use?
• What language (words, phrases, images, symbols) does the author use to persuade the document's audience?
• How does the document's language indicate the author's perspective?
Adapted from: https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/close-reading-classroom-posterStudent Examples:
Students are given a primary source document and asked what to answer specific questions about the structure of the text. For example: How is the text structured? Does this structure make it easy or difficult to make meaning? Does this structure tell us anything about the author’s style or purpose?
Resources:
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