This week’s Forum Friday post is an oldie, but a goodie. Todd (otherwise known as tsguitar) posted this quite useful database of information on the 50 states. I used to use this site with 2nd graders during their state reports, and it’s come in quite handy as a quick guide to elementary age students, but has many robust features that makes it useful for secondary students as well.
tsguitar:
I stumbled upon this and it seems a pretty cool reference for all kinds of things. Not all of the links are correct (the link to California’s Office of Governator is incorrect), but there is a lot of information about each state on one page. This gives a solid database of information for research, political action, or trivia.
One of the newer features that I found pretty interesting is the included “Find Your School” link on each state page. Students can search for school districts and their addresses in order to start up pen pals or just get information about how many students attend the schools in their area (might be useful for a statistics class). Other noteworthy facts included for each state are all of that state’s area codes, colleges & universities, current news events, origin of the state’s name, and more. There’s so much information here that really anyone teaching social studies, math, and even earth science could find useful resources on the page. It even includes links to each state’s government website, making it a useful site for civics as well.
Here are a couple more sites with lots of information about the 50 states, both geared specifically towards youngers students, unlike the much older oriented 50 States Database:
http://www.kidskonnect.com/States/StatesHome.html
http://www.nvo.com/ecnewletter/50statesforkids/
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