A Note: This post is primarily geared towards social studies teachers, but I bet some of you crafty English, writing, and ESOL teachers could use this resource too ;)
C-SPAN is often stereotyped as being dull since they just show Congress blabbering. On the contrary, they have wonderful resources for teachers and for a person who loves learning about politics and the inner workings of the US government. Since I live in the DC area, we get C-SPAN on the radio and I love Sunday afternoons since they replay the audio portions of the Sunday morning news shows WITHOUT commercials. I prefer listening to the talking heads rather than watching them :)
The main purpose of this post is to show you a great resource made for the middle school/high school teacher...Bell Ringers. C-SPAN has a growing library of relatively short video clips and study questions that correspond with important topics students learn in most US history and government/civics classes---especially those AP classes. C-SPAN has been uploading their programming to the Internet for free for years, but instead of having to spend time wading through a 90 minute congressional hearing, they have done this work for you!
In order to use Bell Ringers, you will need to create a free account, but I promise it will be worth it! I like how I can share the video clips on Edmodo and add them to my class lessons to help explain challenging concepts.
Here is the link to the video below that explains the history the filibuster in 2 minutes. Here is a video clip explaining the history of the filibuster:
