Early Civil Rights Movement

In subbing for Rebecca Simmons' U.S. History class, I have come across some of her excellent ideas.

Rebecca uses 5 B's to explain the Early Civil Rights Movement.  They are:
1. Baptist Preacher (MLK Jr.)
2. Baseball
3. Brown v. Board of Edu.
4. Montgomery Bus Boycott
5. Bodyguards at School (the Little Rock, AK situation)

In doing some background research for this bit of direct instruction, I came across this great article on America, baseball and integration.  If I were to teach this in the future, I would love to have students maybe read this article on their own.

Geography Blog

I came across this teacher's blog at Sunset Ridge Middle School.  It would be great to use as Geography collaboration.

U.S. Government Blog

My dear friend Brenna Perry has been interning this year at Timpview High School.  I came across her U.S. Government blog today and I liked her material!  She has a lot of great ideas and resources.

Campaign Commercials

The website "The Living Room Candidate" allows you to look at different commercial ads that campaigns have used since Eisenhower.  The campaign ads are from 1958 to 2008. Students could take a trip to the computer lab and compare and contrast these commercials.   They could answer questions like the following:

How have campaign commercial stayed the same over the years?  How have they differed?
How do campaign commercials target the opponent?
Which add do you think is the most affective in 2008?
What is the campaign commercial of Jackie Kennedy in 1960 trying to do (she is speaking Spanish in the commercial)?
How do you think that the television changed presidential campaigning?
etc.

They can view the commercials themselves and read little blurbs about the candidates and the election.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere allows you to take a survey in your classroom using texts.  This would be great, especially in a government class where you want lots of opinions.  The link I provided takes you straight to the K-12 Teachers section of the website

Where do your taxes go?

I just discovered that the White House has a site that will tell you where your tax money goes (national defense, medicare, education, natural disaster relief, etc.)  Students could type in their income or an average American income and see where the taxes go :)

Just click here

Occupy Wall Street Video Clip

CNN just put out a video clip trying to explain the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  This could be used in a variety of ways: from protest, revolution, government, economy, etc.  I don't know how well the video explains it but it could be good.

Here it is: