Florida Teacher Resources

These teacher resources were gath­ered in 2011 from a mail­ing to over 4,000 Flori­da teach­ers. They all come rec­om­mend­ed and are cur­rent­ly being used in classrooms.

Flori­da Web Resources

Bre­vard Dis­trict Web­site - They’ve put togeth­er a wealth of resources in the fol­low­ing areas, many with a focus on Florida:

Cen­tral Flori­da Mem­o­ry Project Search and browse over 80,000 images of his­toric mate­ri­als such as diaries and let­ters that describe the region and how peo­ple sur­vived day-by-day in this extreme and rugged envi­ron­ment. They also havemMaps, pho­tographs, and post­cards that illus­trate how the region looked in the ear­ly years and how it changed over time. Teach­ers can access ready-made class­room activ­i­ties, les­son plans, and addi­tion­al resources here.

Flori­da Com­pre­hen­sive Assess­ment Test® links:
FCAT Explor­er — A free, online edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram for Flori­da’s stu­dents that rein­forces read­ing and math skills out­lined in the Sun­shine State Standards.

FCAT Prep Materials

Flori­da Cen­ter for Read­ing Research

Flori­da Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion — the state edu­ca­tion agency of Flori­da. It gov­erns pub­lic edu­ca­tion and man­ages fund­ing and test­ing for local edu­ca­tion­al agen­cies (school boards)

Flori­da Divi­sion of His­tor­i­cal Resources — has a lot of great infor­ma­tion and is very kid friendly.

Flori­da Elec­tron­ic Library

Flori­da Human­i­ties Coun­cil — Cre­ates and spon­sors pro­grams and pub­li­ca­tions that explore the peo­ple, places, and ideas that shape Flori­da. These pro­grams enable teach­ers to learn about Flori­da’s rich his­to­ry and cul­ture, from colo­nial St. Augus­tine to mod­ern-day Miami.

Flori­da Mem­o­ry Project

Flori­da Trea­sures series for Read­ing — online resources are specif­i­cal­ly designed to help teach­ers teach by pro­vid­ing engag­ing activ­i­ties for stu­dents at all lev­els. These Online Teacher Resources offer con­tent designed to help teach­ers save time and keep stu­dents moti­vat­ed and focused.

Trail of Flori­da Indi­an Heritage

My Pear­son Train­ing on Flori­da Social Studies

Old Flori­da Maps

Orrin’s Web­site — For social stud­ies of the Flori­da Native Amer­i­cans before the Euro­peans arrived. It has “Kid’s facts” and pic­tures of the dif­fer­ent types of homes. It also pro­vides a com­plete library of the avail­able online mate­ri­als about the more than 800 Amerindi­an lan­guages and the peo­ple that speak them.

TeachingFlorida.org — Pro­vides teach­ers with a dynam­ic, inter­ac­tive, and author­i­ta­tive site on Flori­da’s his­to­ry and heritage.

Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da — Social Stud­ies Resources for Stu­dents and Teach­ers. They have many read­ing skill pages and activ­i­ties that cor­re­late direct­ly to the Flori­da social stud­ies cur­ricu­lum. There is also Flori­da His­to­ry cur­ricu­lum (Under the link Flori­da Then and Now you will find numer­ous lessons on sev­er­al Flori­da top­ics from the Flori­da Mem­o­ry Project.)

Span­ish Colo­nial Florida

Span­ish Colo­nial St. Augus­tine: A Resource for Teachers

Span­ish Flori­da: Evo­lu­tion of a Colo­nial Soci­ety, 1513–1763

The Flori­da Muse­um of Nat­ur­al History

St. Augus­tine His­to­ry Project at the Flori­da Muse­um of Nat­ur­al History

Ideas From Oth­er Teachers

TeachersPayTeachers.com — a com­mu­ni­ty of edu­ca­tors who come togeth­er to share their work, their insights, and their inspi­ra­tion with one anoth­er. We are the first and largest open mar­ket­place where teach­ers share, sell, and buy orig­i­nal edu­ca­tion­al resources. They have sev­er­al resources specif­i­cal­ly for teach­ing with A Land Remem­bered.

  • I enjoy using the stere­oview pic­tures on the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da web­site show­ing var­i­ous places around Flori­da in 3D. I show the web­site through a pro­jec­tor onto our Smart board. I have the kids bring in their old 3D glass­es so they can see the pho­tos pro­ject­ed. It works on a com­put­er mon­i­tor too. The kids love this!

When I focus a writ­ing les­son around a social stud­ies theme, we pull from Non-Fic­tion arti­cles as we read aloud to deter­mine the Elab­o­ra­tion and Craft focus of the day. I get those arti­cles from my local news­pa­per and also Time for Kids.

  • Most of our field trips are con­nect­ed to Social Stud­ies.  Also, we do a huge unit on gov­ern­ment which includes a won­der­ful sim­u­la­tion of how gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly works.  The kids run for office and then meet to pass laws.  It’s a huge success.

When I teach read­ing, I use author’s web sites all the time which usu­al­ly have great teacher guides. [We do this at TeachALandRemembered.com] Rick Rior­dan and Kate DiCamil­lo have great stuff to use for free on their sites that go along with their books.

  • Google a lot of key words which brings me to var­i­ous edu­ca­tion web­sites that I couldn’t pos­si­bly list.

I use the A Land Remem­bered maps from the books and we made a Flori­da his­to­ry scrap­book with many of the resources in the book.

  • We take a field trip to the Lake Placid, Flori­da Arch­bold Bio­log­i­cal Sta­tion that has sci­en­tists on staff who con­duct a tour and pro­vide mate­ri­als made by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da. It has FCAT (Flori­da Test­ing) Style ques­tions and is also a cross cur­ric­u­lar study that incor­po­rates Read­ing, Sci­ence, Math and Writ­ing. Our Edu­ca­tion­al coor­di­na­tor there is Rick Lavoy.

I’ve learned over the years that I don’t teach the way anoth­er teacher might, so I don’t buy teach­ing guides—instead, I look for real­ly sol­id stu­dent resources (lit­er­a­ture, pri­ma­ry sources, etc.), then I devel­op my own ideas on how to inte­grate them into my class­room teach­ing.  I look for 3 things:

  1. Qual­i­ty of resource
  2. Cor­re­la­tion to my curriculum
  3. Cost—I want every stu­dent to have some­thing in his/her hands.
  • I am par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 3‑yr Teach­ing Amer­i­can His­to­ry (TAH) Grant, fund­ed by the DOE and spon­sored by the Flori­da Human­i­ties Coun­cil,  that pro­vides me with an abun­dance of mate­ri­als (arti­cles, guest speak­ers, field experience).

I also like to use fic­tion­al books to go along with his­tor­i­cal con­cepts when I can.  I have used sto­ries about St. Augus­tine, South Flori­da, and Tam­pa.  I espe­cial­ly love using A Land Remem­bered, because it cov­ers so many of the places, peo­ple and events I teach in our curriculum.

  • We go to the Pen­saco­la His­toric Vil­lage which con­nects with the ear­ly 1800’s in Pen­saco­la.  It is an excel­lent tour.  We vis­it the Indi­an Tem­ple Muse­um and one room school­house in Fort Wal­ton Beach.  This con­nects with the ear­ly Native Amer­i­can part of Flori­da His­to­ry.  Then we go to Tal­la­has­see to the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um (flo­ra and fau­na), Old Cap­i­tal, New Cap­i­tal, and His­to­ry Muse­um.  We also have vis­it­ed Arca­dia Mills in Mil­ton where the kids learn about the his­to­ry of tex­tiles in that local region.  It’s a very spe­cif­ic part of his­to­ry in one par­tic­u­lar place, but is an excel­lent field trip.  They also bring in some sci­ence con­nec­tions along with archae­ol­o­gy.  Anoth­er option is that there are peo­ple at the San Luis Muse­um in Tal­la­has­see who will come to your school, bring arti­facts and make a talk with hands on activ­i­ties.  It’s like the muse­um com­ing to you.

I learn about valu­able texts through coun­ty train­ings and attend­ing The Tam­pa Bay Area Writ­ing Project meet­ings. Four major texts that I love are: Teach­ing Young Writ­ers to Elab­o­rate by Megan S Sloan, The Teach­ing for Under­stand­ing Guide by Tina Blythe and Assoc.,  Com­pre­hen­sion Con­nec­tions by Tan­ny McGre­gor and Com­pre­hen­sion through Con­ver­sa­tion by Maria Nichols. They guide my instruc­tion, mostly.

  • I use an inter­ac­tive “smart” board in my class­room and I’m always look­ing for things that can be used on it (par­tic­u­lar­ly games and inter­est­ing text).

After read­ing A Land Remem­bered each year, we host a Pio­neer Pic­nic for the school. Pub­lix donates fried chick­en and the par­ents all donate baked goods. The kids all play games such as tug of war and three legged races, and we have a square danc­ing group come out to teach the fam­i­lies how to dance. It is a lot of fun and a great fundrais­er to help defray the cost of our year­ly St Augus­tine trip.