Social Studies

Resources for the Acquisition of English Language Learners

from around the world

This is another one of those good websites easy to overlook because of the name. It includes lesson plans and activities related to American and world history with contributions and experiences of people of Hispanic heritage included. If, like me, you believe that multicultural education means being included in the curriculum and not just tacked on during the first week of May, then you will like this site.

Retanet: Resources for teaching about the Americas. This is my personal favorite among the social studies websites. It has a wide range of topics, the lesson plans I reviewed taught to stated objectives and had students doing historical research. This lesson on Slave Women of African Descent in Brazil, Haiti and Jamaica is a good example of the type and quality of material you'll find here.

Elementary history lessons linked to the Texas standards but useful for any state. The website is bilingual. If you do not read Spanish well, don't worry. Even if there is a link in Spanish it invariably links to another page that is in Spanish and English. This site is also has student assignments incorporated in the lesson plans that are good examples of making use of computers by students for on-line learning.

The Mexico for Kids website - history, government, biodiversity and current events of Mexico. This site is available in Spanish, English, French and Italian. Other than the multilingual aspect, though, it is pretty much the same as any upper elementary social studies textbook - not very exciting.

Bits and pieces of history

Okay, the bilingual "History Rap of Panama" is not linked to any state standards, but I had to include it because my own teenagers loved it while they made rude noises when some of the websites with administrative stamps of approval were mentioned.

This is a terrific page for reminding your students about liberty, independence and that Mexican Independence Day is in September, not May! Be forewarned that not all of the links to images worked here when we tried it, for example, of the map of Mexico. The story is so well-written in Spanish and English, though, that it is a worthwhile assignment for any class.

GEOGRAPHY

You can't tell a book by its cover. I assumed that the Spanish webpages on the Enchanted Learning site would teaching Spanish as a foreign language. There are a lot of resources for that can be used for teaching everything from Astronomy to Zoology. The site has maps, worksheets and webpages with information on explorers, Mexico and much more. Back up to the dictionary page and you can also find similar resources for French, German, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese.

The Eduhound World and Countries section is useful not just for students and for teachers designing social studies lessons but also for those teachers who find they have a student from Belize and do not know in which hemisphere Belize can be found.

Teaching English naturally uses projects in the natural environment to teach English. I liked this website because I think social studies classes are precursors to social science. All science, in my opinion, is something you do, not something you read about.