Preparing for Black History Month?

The Teacher's Discovery English and Social Studies divisions are interested in making your planning for Black History Month a little easier.



This DVD, "Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream," is a great piece for reviewing one of the most important speeches in American History. King's speech is also a great example of a truly remarkable rhetorician at work.

You'll find a sample of the video, and a free quiz to accompany it, at the link above.




Speaking of Martin Luther King, Jr., this great Talking Poster would be a fine addition to your classroom decor. Press the button on the poster for an audio clip of his famous speech.



And speaking of classroom decor (we are apparently all about the segues today), this poster set will let the words of African American poets resonate with your students every time the pass by. Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and others speak across generations, right into your students' hearts.



If you're interested in covering the Harlem Renaissance from all the angles, our set of three Harlem Renaissance PowerPoint presentations lead your students through the literary, musical, and artistic movements withing the Harlem Renaissance. The images and sounds in these presentations make them something really special.

If these pieces aren't quite what you're looking for, head over to the Teacher's Discovery website and give it a search.

As always, feel free to give us a call or drop us an email at teachersbrunch @ teachersdiscovery. com.

Political Cartoons Confront Haiti

The interesting thing about these recent political cartoons is the similar subtext.

Miep Gies, Anne Frank Helper, Passes-Away

The world learned this week that the 100-year-old Miep Gies died Monday after falling late last year.

Far from a household name here in the states, Gies is remembered for hiding Anne Frank and others in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

The story of the Secret Annex reminds us that heroes can come in all shapes and sizes, and often the bravest do their good works far away from the spotlight.

New Nixon Photos

Here's a neat tidbit about the National Archives releasing some documents from the Nixon presidency.

In particular, the photographs from Oliver Atkins should be interesting.

Nominate a Word of the Year

The American Dialect Society is accepting nominations for the 2009 Word of the Year, and the 2000-2009 Word of the Decade.

As the site says:

The best "word of the year" candidates will be:

—new or newly popular in 2009
—widely or prominently used in 2009
—indicative or reflective of the popular discourse

Last year's Word of the Year was "bailout." The 2007 Word was "subprime."

In keeping with the economic theme, and since the website says phrases are allowed, we vote for "Jobless Recovery." We like how it's both hopeful, and dreadfully pessimistic. When you read it you can feel good, but not accuse politicians of sugar-coating the truth. It's a win-win!

If you'd like to have your students enter their choices, you can send an email from their website here.

Feel free to post your choices in the comments section. We'd love to hear what your kids think should win.

Fall is for football!

U.S. History teachers, your students are thinking football right now, anyway.

Play into their interests, and make use of that technology you got this year (or whenever!), with one of our U.S. History football games.



With eight topics to choose from, they make a great review any time!

Check out what we've got here!

Oh, No! We got our U.S. History products all wrong!

Well, not exactly.

Some of us from Teacher's Brunch HQ in Rainy-and-60-degrees-all-weekend Auburn Hills, MI saw the latest Quentin Tarantino film, "Inglorious Bastereds," over the weekend.

While professional movie critics have largely been split about the film's success or failure, we amateur film critics thought the movie was pretty good.

In particular, the performance from Christoph Waltz as suave, smart Standartenführer Hans Landa was impressive, and he rightly won an award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Though the film is decidedly not safe for school, we wondered at the time how many U.S. History students are going to see the film and write essays about the war's end that are just plain WAY wrong.

We also thought to another recent WWII film, "Valkyrie." That movie probably is OK for most high school classrooms, conforms to reality more than a bit more closely, and is available here.

Tom Cruise is even not too crazy in it.

Some fava beans and a nice chianti

With all of the conversation about the proposed health care bills, we here at Teacher's Brunch, HQ in still-freaked-out-by-swine-flu Auburn Hills, MI thought it might be beneficial to remember one of the very earliest social program suggestions, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathon Swift.

Here is the full text.

Swift makes some valid points, though we worry that playgrounds might be mistaken for farmer's markets.

Another New Poster: Periodic Table of Loved and Admired

Our Periodic Table of Loved and Admired is the perfect to companion to our Teacher-Favorite Periodic Table of Dictators, Despots, and the Despised.

We hear pretty often from teachers who use our periodic tables to inspire discussion and writing assignments.

This new one will definitely be a nice addition to the line.

We bundled the two posters in a sort of "Best and Worst" packaged deal, that English teachers can find here, and social studies teachers can find here.



Take a look and let us know how you use them in your classroom.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Cow has landed."

The title of this post is a not so subtle nod to the anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, but is also serving to announce the distribution of our Fall Social Studies catalogs.

Teachers who purchase items from Teacher's Discovery with their home addresses will be receiving our comprehensive Social Studies catalog featuring the cow on the cover.

Everyone else will have a catalog waiting for them at school.

If you'd like a catalog before that, give us at call at 1-800-543-4180. Tell them the blog sent ya!

Foreign Language is Twittering!

We were a little harsh on the Twitter device recently, but to promote the Spanish/French/German folks of Teacher's Discovery, we'll kindly ignore it.

So here goes. . . .

Hey, everyone, from Teacher's Brunch HQ in sitting-in-sun-but-watching-storm-clouds Auburn Hills, MI.

Just a little note for Spanish, French, and German teachers.

Our brothers and sisters in the Teacher's Discovery Foreign Language division recently started posting to Twitter.

They promised us that if we help them get 100 followers, we'd all get cookies.

We love cookies.

So give them a look see, if you care to. They're working on some really great projects for FL teachers, from high tech downloadable and streaming stuff, to great good old-fashioned craft kits. They'll also be tweeting about new projects in the other divisions, too, so Science, Social Studies, and English teachers don't need to feel left out.

You can find their Twitter feed here.

Geographic Bee Winner

This story details the recent victory of Eric Yang, 13, in the National Geographic Bee.

He won on a nail-biting triple-overtime sudden death question. Here it is:

Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country?

Eric got it right, making what he called "an educated guess."

So congratulations to Eric, and the folks who helped him get that education.

Teacher's Brunch and Teacher's Discovery have a nice little collection of geography games that might help your students be the next Bee winner.

Here is a link to them: right here, folks!

Space: The Silly Frontier

We here at TB HQ in soggy Auburn Hills, MI love when pop culture and entertainment collide with the real world.

So we've been following the story of NASA's call to name a section of the International Space Station based on popular votes, and comedian Stephen Colbert's push to get his viewers to vote to name it after himself.

Well, he won the vote, but NASA is going in a slightly different direction.

Colbert had done a similar thing with the voting to name a Hungarian Bridge.

The lesson for students here? Voting matters (or maybe not, given that NASA sorta picked the name it liked best, anyway).

What Should We Make Next?

Regards and salutations from Final Four-obsessed Auburn Hills, MI, just a jaunt down the highway from Detroit, home of men's college basketball's championship this weekend.

We had a product development meeting today--one of the many steps of the process that eventually results in the creation of great stuff we hope helps you in the classroom.

After the meeting, we were sitting in the TB HQ office thinking about some of the ideas that were floated around, and we thought it might be great to turn the process over to you, dear readers.

So. What can we make for you, English teacher? Science teacher? Social Studies teacher? Spanish teacher? French teacher? German teacher?

What do you need? How can we help?

Feel free to drop a line in the comments section, or email teachersbrunch at teachersdiscovery dot com.

Keep doing all the wonderful things you're doing!

More Dr. Seuss!

This site features a great retrospective of Dr. Seuss' work during World War II.

It's interesting to see the style we usually equate with characters like the Cat in the Hat being used in a different context.





This is not our first posting about political cartoons, so obviously we think they're cool, and valuable in the classroom.

The depictions of the Japanese, in particular, are more than a little off-putting today. Maybe that's something you and your students could consider.

How does war influence our perceptions of the enemy? How will today's enemy be depicted tomorrow?

Our Favorite Things We've Made (part four!)

Alicia has this to say about a PowerPoint presentation she ushered forth into the world called "The Reagan Revolution and the 1980s":

"The Reagan Revolution and the 1980s PowerPoint is much more than leg warmers, leotards, and shoulder pads--although we couldn't possibly leave all those crazy '80s fads out! Reminisce as you relive the days when 'Thriller' moves ruled the dance floor, the Smurfs found their way onto your TV set every Saturday morning, and you purchased your first 'car phone.'"

"Students can learn about Ronald Reagan, the man who was president while all this was going on. Follow along on his journey from humble beginnings in Iowa, to his acting days in Hollywood, to his emergence on the political scene, and to his years in the White House. Teach your students the definition of 'Reaganomics' and show them its triumphs and downfalls. Examine the Iran-Contra Scandal, the end of the Cold War, and the effects of being a 'Great Communicator.'"








It's a great piece. We even have a game to go with it!


Here's a link to download a sample if you're a PC user.

Here's the download link for Mac users.


We hope you'll check it out and let us know what you think.


(By the way, Alicia is the young lady with dark hair who seems to appear on every other page of our catalog.)

Our Favorite Things We've Made (part three!)

Nina has this to say about her favorite PowerPoint presentation, the French and Indian War:

"If only there was a teaching aid when I was in school that brought the French and Indian war – the battles, people, places – alive like this PowerPoint does.

Listening to the audio, watching the animated maps, and looking at colorful slides will make your students understand that this was the war that truly began it all for our country."






Here's a sample to download for PC: click here, PC person!

Here's a Mac download: Mac folks, this is for you!

Teaching With Music Videos

Hello from Teacher's Brunch HQ here in soggy-was-warm-gonna-snow-Auburn Hills, MI.

We'll be honest up front about this blog post. First, this idea won't work in every classroom. Second, this idea won't be cool with every principal. Third, we need to say "thanks" to Mike, our tech guru, who taught us how to embed YouTube content into a blog.

This is Mike, looking dapper for Halloween:



We use YouTube to play music to help us focus in the office, and it got us thinking about using music videos in the classroom. Below are two examples of some pretty interesting videos. The first is "Handlebars" by Flobots. The second is the Linkin Park song "Shadow of the Day."













It would be pretty interesting to use these videos in a Social Studies class to spark discussion about government and media, the role of common people in a democracy, or how the First Amendment protects the right to make videos that could be interpreted as critical of the government.

In English class, students could analyze imagery, the storytelling aspects of the videos, or even write a compare and contrast paper about the videos.

A lot of acts have official YouTube channels, so high quality video is pretty accessible.

In addition to being familiar with the song, of course, we suggest you check-out the comments for video before you show them. Some folks post comments decidedly school INappropriate.

But it would be fun to use technology your students are really familiar with, along with their culture, to get them thinking about bigger concepts.



(here's an extra credit video. we don't know how to use it in class, but it's pretty funny, anyway!)

Our Favorite Things We've Made! (part two)

Ryan has this to say about his favorite game, "Early Explorers and Colonies Challenge":

"Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Cabeza de Vaca and Tom our buyer, what do all of these people have in common? It's not that Tom was around to work on their ships and give us great sketches of what life was like back in those times. They are all stars in Early Explorers and Colonies Challenge. This Challenge series game reaches all the way back to the land bridge, works its way through the many great explorers that reached the Americas and ends with the rise of Jamestown and the Pilgrims. Which explorer was the first to set foot in Florida and not have it bitten off by a gator? Your students will jump over a cow when they find out what the explorer's name Cabeza de Vaca really means. What could Hernando de Soto have done to have his body buried at the bottom of the Mississippi River? Let's just say he didn't default on some shady loans. I bet the seven bishops of Mérida are still laughing about the wild goose chase they started of the seven cities of gold. I'm sure Coronado isn't laughing. These are just some of the people you will encounter in Early Explorers and Colonies Challenge."



Sounds like he had fun making it.

And if we have fun, your students will, too.



as an added bonus, here's a picture of Ryan himself, "having fun" at our Teacher's Discovery Halloween party.



We're glad Ryan's on the team.

We're also glad we're not pumpkins.

Civil Rights Challenge Game

This just arrived, perfect for your interactive whiteboard, or just a stand alone computer, or even as a computer lab activity.

Civil Rights Challenge is a game that will review all the important names, faces, and events in the American Civil Rights movement.



PC users can download a sample here. Those of you who are Mac-inclined, the sample is here.


This game is the perfect companion for our Civil Rights Movement PowerPoint presentation.

So, use the one to teach, the other to review, and have happy (and better-informed) students!


A sample of the PowerPoint is here for the PC-people, and here for you wacky Mac'ers.

As always, let us know what you think and how you use them in your classroom.