Awesome Curriculum Resources

New Visions for Public Schools is a Curriculum project designed for 9th and 10th graders for the New York State Social Studies Framework.

The project includes some awesome resources for any of us teaching world history.  All of the units open in Google docs and include documents, maps, charts, and images.  The documents are relatively short with reading reading comprehension questions. Links to videos clips from a variety of sources include questions and time cues.  In addition, each unit includes 40 or 50 Regents multiple choice questions.

I explored a 9th grade unit called Iterations and Disruptions, or exploration and colonization of the Americas.  In one activity about the conquest of the Aztecs and Incas, students read a short description of each conquest and note the similarities.

In another activity students watch short clips from Guns, Germs, and Steel to figure out why the Spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs and Inca despite being outnumbered and in a foreign land?

I love these resources and am incorporating some of them into  study guides for upcoming units.