Here's the Thing:

Schools across the United States place heavy emphasis on subjects like English, Math, and the Sciences.  Programs in these subjects are often rigorous, thanks to standardized tests and other federal and state requirements.  There is a lack of such incentive to have high-quality lessons in  subjects like History, Social Studies, and Civics, and many of these programs have fallen by the wayside in terms of the funding and attention they receive.  But these subjects are very important, because they teach students how to be culturally informed, civilized adults.  So what's a teacher to do?

That's where we come in.   Collaborating with middle school and high school teacher and students from Philadelphia and Buffalo, we are designing lesson guides to help teachers present topics in these "forgotten subjects" in an engaging way.  On this site, we have provided introductory and summary activities, relevant multimedia, talking points, and teacher references that include examples of state standards and performance indicators.  This set of resources, dubbed the Social Studies Sidekick, is a tool we hope will allow teachers to breathe new life into their classrooms, one topic at a time.

The material on this wiki is open source, so feel free to use and distribute it.

Available Lessons 

About us 

Sources