Site vs. Situation: Location! Location! Location!
Students will develop and understanding of the importance of taking into account the totality of a location’s geography when selection a location to live.

Mapping Routes and Distances
Students will create maps of present day Alabama and calculate distances.

Plotting Points in Alabama  The students will be able to use coordinates to find locations of specific cities on a map of Alabama.

Edible Alabama and Her Agricultural Resources  This is a great culminating activity after a unit study on the natural resources of the state of Alabama.  Students will investigate some of Alabama's agricultural resources and create a multimedia presentation about one of them or recipe brochure featuring Alabama resources.  Students will then decorate cookies that have been cut into the shape of Alabama, with various food items to represent the agricultural resources found in Alabama.

Alabama Map/Quiz: Printable map/quiz.

Historical Map Archive: Maps from before 1826 to present - some show population data.

Discover Our Town.com:  Alabama Department of Tourism and Travel site.

The Magpie Sings the Great Depression: Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1942.

The New Deal Network: An educational guide to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Grapes of Wrath: The questions, exercises, and assignments on these pages are designed to guide students' reading of the literary work and to provide suggestions for exploring the implications of the story through discussions, research, and writing.

CNN: Current new stories.
 
ABC News 4 Kids: Posts new stories every Tuesday and Thursday appropriate for elementary and middle school students. Each news article has an interactive, animated presentation. Also included is an archive of previous articles.

Alabama Department of Archives & History: Timelines, activity sheets, teacher resources.

Alabama History Timeline:  A very thorough resource.

Suggestions for English Language Learners: 
(E/B=Entering/Beginning, D=Developing, E=Expanding)

(E/B) Students review map skills.
(E/B) Students scan for information.
(E/B) Teach use of media center; locate and identify reference material.
(E/B) Students complete an information chart in a group.
(E/B) Students identify and label illustrated historical and current economic, political, and geographic information about Alabama on thematic maps.
(D) Students compare/contrast historical and current economic, political, and geographic information about Alabama from thematic maps using graphic organizers (with word boxes) and written descriptions.
(D) Students use a language jigsaw activity to obtain information for a graph.
(D) Students conduct an interview.
(D) Students complete a cloze passage using a completed information chart.
(E) Students write a short narrative using information gained in an interview.
(E) Students complete a chart using information gathered through research.
(E) Students write a narrative from a completed information chart.
(E) Students interpret historical and current economic, political, and geographic information about Alabama on thematic maps using social studies texts, trade books and the Internet.

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