EDS 308: Finding Online Multicultural Books: Online Teacher Resources

Brightly is an educational literacy site for parents, teachers and all educators. Find children's books along with engaging activities and lessons. Use the "popular topics" to find a subject area. As an example of what this site offers, here is a link to selected children's books about germs. 

The Choices Program from Brown University offers innovative, researched based K-12  educational curriculum on international issues that give more perspective for students. The content associates history with current issues and encourages analytical thinking. 

Educators 4 Social Change offers resources for educators to encourage civic responsibility with their students. Here is a list of digital teaching tools they recommend. 

Educators of America is an award winning educational nonprofit that offers many resources for teachers including their own research, white papers, lesson plans, and professional development. 

Girls Garage is a nonprofit design and building program and dedicated workspace for girls and female-identifying youth ages 9-18. Founded in 2013, Girls Garage is the first-ever design and building workshop for female youth in the United States. See the link here for distance programming and projects. 

GoNoodle is a site that engages kids with free monthly videos on mindfulness and movement. Created by child developmental experts, searchable categories are physical awareness, socio-emotional health, and academic success. 

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) is a unique research library of examination, study, and research for Wisconsin school and public librarians, teachers, early childhood care providers, university students, and others interested in children’s and young adult literature. The CCBC is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, and receives additional support from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The CCBC is especially known for its support of gathering information for teachers facing book bans, and promoting diversity statistics in the publishing industry of children's books. 

The CCBC has a searchable database of recommended books.

EDSITEment is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for the Humanities and offers free resources for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality K-12 humanities education materials in the subject areas of history and social studies, literature and language arts, foreign languages, arts, and culture.

All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. They cover a wide range of humanities subjects, from American history to literature, world history and culture, civics, language, art, architecture, and archaeology, and have been judged by humanities specialists to be of high intellectual quality. EDSITEment is not intended to represent a complete curriculum in the humanities, nor does it prescribe any specific course of study.

The EDSITEment experience includes:

• Lesson plans composed of primary-source-rich activities suitable for elementary, middle school, high school, and Advanced Placement classrooms.
• Resources for National History Day projects, including “Ask an Expert” videos and Learning Lab collections specific to the annual theme.
• Teacher’s Guides that provide resources, project ideas, and access to NEH funded projects and programs on a variety of topics, eras, and people.
• Google Classroom compatible student activities that incorporate multi-media resources and interdisciplinary learning.
• Chronicling America, the database of historic newspapers from across the United States developed in collaboration with the Library of Congress.
• Resources for Constitution Day, heritage months, holidays, and more!

EDSITEment was selected as “Best for History” in 2019 by Scholastic Education and as one of the top 25 websites by the America Association of School Librarians in 2010. EDSITEment has been accepted into the Smithsonian Institution's Permanent Research Collection of Information Technology, the world's premier historical record of computing applications and innovations.

The Cult of Pedagogy is a blog for teachers that covers many things for teacher nerds, the craft of teaching and pedagogy in general (instruction, classroom management, technology) and many many other topics. There is a post about using graphic novels in the classroom here. 

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that offers a large set of tools to educate students. Videos and other teaching exercises and activities are found here. Here is a page to start searching by age, class, subject, etc.

NASA at Home has many online tools to engage people of all ages: e-books, virtual tours, apps, podcasts, videos, and a special site for kids about space and STEM including games, coloring pages, books online, problems to solve, and construction projects. There is also a tab for teachers, parents and anyone interested in education and space. 

National Geographic Kids offers games, videos, teaching activities and more.

NPR Education has interesting educational ideas to engage older students with learning about current issues. Here is a link with examples of how to engage children with climate change. 

The New York Times Learning Network is an online portal to educational resources for older students and teachers. Designed to "bring the world into the classroom" this site uses articles published in the NYT and offers educational activities for students (quizzes, contests, daily lessons, writing prompts, photos and videos, student opinions) and teacher resources plus tips on how to use the site. 

Teaching Strategies has educational resources for educators, parents, and all child care workers. They have opened up their content free during the confinement to keep children engaged and learning. 

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has a site of free organized educational tools based on your state and its educational standards. Start by choosing your local station at the top, which will associate state standards with activities, or simply browse by subject. 

Rethinking Schools, based in Milwaukee, WI, is a site of educational tools created by teachers concerned with equity issues in education and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane and multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race.

Smithsonian's History Explorer was developed by the National Museum of American History in partnership with the Verizon Foundation to offer hundreds of free, innovative online resources for teaching and learning American history.

The site is designed for use by K-12 teachers and students, afterschool program providers, families, and individuals interested in lifelong learning.

History Explorer's resources focus on learning history by "reading" objects for the stories they hold about the nation and its many peoples. Learning activities feature artifacts selected from over 3 million items in the Museum's collections, and draw on the expertise of the Museum's renowned curatorial staff.

To get started using History Explorer, visit our How to Use this Site page.

Participate in Smithsonian's History Explorer online community of self-directed learners-both inside and outside the classroom. Interact with other users in a dialog about American history and its connections to our lives today. To share an idea or to be considered for inclusion in focus or evaluation groups, send an email to: HistoryTeachers@si.edu.

The SPICE program (Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education) serves as a bridge between Stanford University and K-12 schools and community colleges by developing multidisciplinary curriculum materials on international themes.

TeachingBooks.net is an online database provided by Murphy Library that can be used by teachers, students, librarians, and families to explore children's books and young adult literature and their authors. The database provides access to educational materials and programs (short movies, audio book readings, book discussion guides). UWL members will need to provide netID and password to gain access. Here is a link to a few tutorials on how to use the different features they offer including a quick introductory video, how to create customized reading lists, how to create an educator login, sharing resources, the Chrome Extension, and other archived webinars on other subjects (book groups, literature circles, cultural representation in literature, multi-leveled lessons, "fresh ideas", English language learners) and much more!

Teaching for Change is a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. with the motto of "building social justice, starting in the classroom." This organization uses publications, professional development, and parent organizing programs to accomplish their goal. You can find teaching resources here. Recommended books here. 

Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) is a non-profit educational organization that designs teaching tools that create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants. Teaching Tolerance emphasizes social justice and anti-bias, which encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. Classroom resources, professional development, and articles for discussion are found here. 

 TED Ed is working with expert educators and TED speakers throughout the world to create and share high-quality, interactive, video-based lessons on a daily basis, for free. 

Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government is a service of the Government Publishing Office about the Federal Government for kids, teachers, parents and anyone who works with children. 

We Are Teachers is a site for teachers, parents, and anyone looking for online teaching support resources for remote education. Classroom ideas, free printables by subject and grade. 

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. For more than ten years, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. Find and select teaching materials by time period, resource type, grade level here.