Video Resources - Social Studies

Video Libraries

• UPDATED Teaching Channel CCSS Video Library offers useful supports for implementing the Common Core State Standards. The site includes 256 videos that are useful for communications opportunities or professional learning and also includes many lesson plans for teachers that include videos of the CCSS instructional shifts in action. (teachingchannel.org)
• Expeditionary Learning Instructional Videos – These instructional videos help educators analyze practices they may want to adopt, customize, or use as a provocation for reflection and discussion. Topics include: Learning Targets; Checking for Understanding; Using Data with Students; Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback; Student-Led Conferences; Celebrations of Learning; Passage Presentations with Portfolios; Standards-Based Grading; Literacy; Inspiring Excellence; Management in the Active Classroom; Differentiation. (elschools.org) 
• The America Achieves Common Core website helps teachers to implement the Common Core by showing videos of real classrooms and teachers demonstrating key shifts of the Common Core. The site also has downloadable lesson plans and worksheets, examples of student work, as well as links to videos of teachers analyzing their own lessons and progress in implementing Common Core. (commoncore.americaachieves.org)
• HippoCampus – is a free, core academic web site that delivers rich multimedia content--videos, animations, and simulations--on general education subjects to middle-school and high-school teachers.
• NBC LEARN– Offers free video collections and resources to supplement lessons and units for Language Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, STEM & Innovation. Sample collections include Mysteries of the Brain, Writers Speak to Kids, Finish the Dream, the Science of Innovation, and the Sustainability of Water.
• OpenEd in collaboration with The Smithsonian provides teachers with free videos and other resources to supplement classroom lessons.
• Khan Academy provides an extensive library of content for K-12 history. (khanacademy.org)
• Accessing Khan Academy in languages other than English (khanacademy.org)
• 40 Resources and Tools for Deeper Learning: Resources include a video series with supporting materials including rubrics, lesson plans, research, and strategy documents. (Expeditionary Learning for the Teaching Channel) Professional Development
  • iTunes U Courses, Created by Teachers for Teachers - These iTunes U courses were developed by a group of classroom teachers to explain the Shifts in ELA / Literacy and mathematics required by the Common Core. Presented in partnership with The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), they showcase a combination of materials from achievethecore.org as well as additional curated resources and interactive activities. These courses were designed to provide a robust self-learning opportunity for individual teachers and to offer high-quality, credible materials that can be used to support professional learning communities in schools. (achievethecore.org) 
  • National Council for the Social Studies ONLINE LEARNING Webinars on a variety of topics including: Sparking Curiosity-Geography, the C3 Framework and the Inquiry Arc, Get Digital with Discovery Education and NCSS and Mapping the Nation: Making Global Classroom Connections. (socialstudies.org) 
  • Common Core Video Exemplars: This site targets Common Core instructional practice for English Language Arts, History/Social Science, Mathematics, Science and Technology. The lessons have been reviewed and annotated using the Instructional Practice Guides which aligns with the Connecticut Core Standards Classroom “Look Fors” document. Each classroom video has student work samples, class materials and interviews from educators. Showing all or parts of the video could be useful in a professional development setting. (teachingthecore.org)   
  • Illuminating Standards Video Series – What would it look like if standards were met with depth, and imagination? The Illuminating Standards Project, a collaborative project of Expeditionary Learning and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, showcases a video collection of long-term, interdisciplinary, arts-infused, community-connected projects illustrating how to make standards come alive in project-based learning. The videos could be used in a professional development setting to have staff examine the relationship between meeting the demands of state standards and the creation of powerful learning experiences for students.  (centerforstudentwork.elschools.org)  
  • Professional Development: Introduction to Literacy Shifts in Content Areas—a 1-4 hour module that provides an introduction to the key shifts required by the CCSS for Literacy in the content areas: history / social studies, science, and technical subjects. (achievethecore.org)
  • Professional Development on ELA/Literacy—a 45-minute professional development video on the shifts in the Common Core in English language arts and literacy from The Council of the Great City Schools. (commoncoreworks.org)
  • Meeting Literacy Standards with Facing History – free webinars offered by Facing History in partnership with the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), introduce several new teaching strategies to help meet literacy standards. (facinghistory.org)  
  • Strengthening Lessons with a Student Work Protocol—This video illustrates how to evaluate a lesson using the EQuIP rubric (Achieve and Teaching Channel)    
  • Making Challenging Texts Accessible: Putting the Common Core into Practice — Each of the four segments in this series (see links below) provide a 30-minute stand-alone session appropriate for K-12 professional development in all content areas. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)  
    • Making Challenging Texts Accessible Segment Outline
      • Part 1: A Three-Prong Approach
      • Part 2: Understanding the Complexity of Complex Text
      • Part 3: Teaching Students How to Close Read a Text
      • Part 4: Specific Strategies for Student Success
  • Facilitating Student-Led Discussions: Putting the Common Core into Practice — Each of the four segments in this series (see links below) provide a 30-minute stand-alone session appropriate for K-12 professional development in all content areas. Although Part 3 provides a kindergarten example and Part 4 a high school example, it is suggested that teachers view both to see the learning progression that takes place. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)
    • Facilitating Student-Led Discussions
      • Part 1: Rational and Discussion Formats
      • Part 2: Developing an Age-Appropriate Teaching Rubric
      • Part 3: Using Student-Led Discussion to Assess Understanding—Elementary
      • Part 4: Using Student-Led Discussion to Assess Understanding—Secondary
  • What's Really Being Said: Close Readings of Primary Source Documents— A “Common Core-izing” Strategy for the History Classroom (Webinar hosted by Avi Black for The Constitutional Rights Foundation)  

  Exemplary Video Lesson Samples

  Elementary

  • Grade Kindergarten Antiques Roadshow—Show and Tell (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grades K-2 Star Student of the Day—Building Community (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grade 1 Our Selves, Our Classroom, Our Families (teaching channel)  
  • Grade 4 3 R’s—Revolution, Reaction, and Reform (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grade 5 Engaging Students in Collaborative Academic Discussions—students engage in a jigsaw protocol to deepen their understanding of the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Erin Daly, Grade 5 for Expeditionary Learning)
  • Grade 5: Analyzing Perspectives through Primary Sources, Part 1 – In the first of a two-part video, fifth-grade students analyze primary source documents about American slavery. (eleducation)
  • Grade 5: Analyzing Perspectives through Primary Sources, Part 2 – In the second of a two-part video, fifth-grade students analyze photographs about American slavery, go on a gallery walk, and then participate in a Socratic Seminar to synthesize their learning. (eleducation)

  Secondary

  • Video: Making Feedback Meaningful - high school English teacher, Sean McComb, demonstrates how to provide personalized and customized feedback to students. Supporting materials included are: video transcript, lesson plan - blog revision , conference preparation worksheet, conferring log, opening sentence worksheet, process blog assignment sheet, workshop log, and Youth Voices blog. (teachingchannel.org) 
  • Grades 6-8 Exploring Emigration - Maps and Migration (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grades 6-8 Exploring Emigration - Cultural Identify (teachingchannel.org)  
  • Grade 8 Reading Closely with Middle School Students Students—students grapple with the complex non-fiction text, Unbroken, to deepen their understanding of the book’s central character and of the World War II era. (Chris DiFulvio and Chris Leins’, Grade 8 for Expeditionary Learning)
  • Getting Ready to Write: Evaluating the Quality of Evidence from Worthy Texts—a process for building background knowledge, reading closely, gathering evidence, testing ideas, and debating claims in preparation for writing an essay (Jeanne Boland, Grade 8 for Expeditionary Learning)
    • Corresponding Grade 8 annotated unit that demonstrates a progression of learning where concepts and skills advance and deepen prior to independent student writing.
  • Using Anchor Texts to Distill Big Ideas: A Lesson on Critical Thinking – The teacher in this Grades 11-12 classroom uses an analysis process that has students first making careful observations and finding patterns prior to drawing conclusions as they connect text details to concepts in order to explore an essential question, “Is evil ever justified?” as part of their HEART OF DARKNESS book discussion. (teachingchannel.org) 
  • Inside the Common Core Classroom: Classroom Video Modules – This video lesson set (see links below) highlights 11th grade history teacher as she instructs her students in the use of primary source materials. Materials include: a lesson summary with Common Core Standards, teaching materials, classroom strategies, video teacher reflections and commentary by education experts. (Johanna Heppeler, East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Illinois for adlit.org)
    • Integrating Knowledge and Ideas Across Multiple Sources of Information – Students are provided with strategies for analyzing and drawing inferences from primary sources: images, maps, and texts
    • Understanding Craft and Structure, Part 1 – Students are guided through the process of "sourcing a document" by looking at the speaker, the occasion, the audience, the purpose and the tone.
    • Understanding Craft and Structure, Part 2 – Students read closely to analyze text in an effort to understand what can be learned by studying specific words and phrases.
  • Grades 9-12 Reading Like a Historian Overview (teachingchannel.org)
  • Citing Evidence from Complex Text— students in engage in a structured evidence-based discussion of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Close reading, citing evidence from text, and speaking and listening skills are highlighted through the video. (Julia St. Martin, Grade 10 for Expeditionary Learning)