National Council for Social Studies – While NCSS has an outstanding website loaded with great information, you may wish to take a closer look at the Teacher Library. In this wonderful database NCSS has selected a collection of amazing classroom activities, teaching ideas, and articles from Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner. Educators can browse the collection, or search by historical period and grade level. It could pay off to take a moment and explore the site. Be sure to visit the lesson resources link for some outstanding lessons

Edsitement – The link brings you to the lesson plan page, be sure to explore other amazing areas in the site. The lesson plans can be explored by Art & Culture, World Language, History & Social Studies , AP U.S. History, and Literature & Language Arts. Be sure to explore the Student Resources. These are engaging interactive activities by grade or subject area collected from around the Web. They can be used to support related lesson plans or as standalone activities in the classroom.

New York Times Learning Network – The New York Times has a wonderful selection of articles and lessons that have a wide range of social studies ideas. You will find categories covering regular social studies, civics, american history, global history, this day in history, geography, current events, and economics. The lessons contain wonderful readings, graphics, and ideas to add to any social study class digital collection.

SAS Curriculum Pathways –  This is a wonderful collection of highly engaging lessons plans available for free from SAS Curriculum Pathways in North Carolina. With a collection of around 700 lesson plans as of this publication, the archive allows teachers to search and also browse through multiple social studies categories. The provided link will bring you to the Social Studies area of the site.

Teachers Pay Teachers – On a recent visit to this site there were  close to 80,000 social studies and history resources available.. It could then be narrowed down to almost 10,000 free social studies and history resources. The supplied link goes to those almost 10,000. With this many, it is real possible to find something. Best of all, use the keyword search and narrow it down more. If free is desired… be sure to turn on that filter.

Go Social Studies Go – This is an open education resource with a goal of bring free social studies textbooks to the work. The selection has text, graphics, movies, interactive activities, and other engaging links. Presently there are textbooks for US History, Ancient History, and World History.

Annenberg Learner – Here you will find a rich interactive collection of activities and they can all be yours to discover when you visit the Annenberg Learner  Social Science Collection. Choose from some engaging opportunities that will benefit a wide variety of social studies classrooms. You can pick from Psychology, Political Science, Area Studies/Geography, History, and Anthropology/Archeology.

OER Commons – What a wonderful place to find open educational resources. In fact, the link provided will bring up over 10, 000 resources just in the social sciences. Take some time and do a search for the exact category of social studies desired. There are some great resources that will supplement any curriculum.

Social Studies and History Teachers’ Blog – Discover this wonderful blog that allows all social studies related teacher to find something that just might fit into a lesson. Here you will find some fun reading, and a lot of engaging ideas.

Mr D’s Neighborhood – This is another creative social studies blog filled with valuable resources and information. It’s content is relevant, engaging, and bound to get students excited about learning all those areas that the social studies encompass. Get ready for a lot of resources.

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Follow Mike Gormans on Twitter: @mjgormans.

This post originally appeared on 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning and was republished with permission.