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Code Switch Podcast from NPR

What’s CODE SWITCH? It’s the fearless conversations about race that you’ve been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we’re all part of the story.  Learn More:

Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Games, Videos & Activities

Play games and watch full episodes of Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum on https://pbskids.org/xavier

Explore the PBS LearningMedia Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum Collection

Inspired by the best-selling kids book series, Ordinary People Change the World, by New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer and illustrator Christopher Eliopoulos, XAVIER RIDDLE AND THE SECRET MUSEUM follows the adventures of Xavier, Yadina and Brad as they tackle everyday problems by doing something extraordinary: traveling back in time to learn from real-life inspirational figures like Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson when they were kids. Each adventure will help young viewers make the connection between the skills that made these historical figures heroes and those same qualities within themselves, helping them discover that they, too, can change the world.

Watch Playlist of Full Episodes:

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Here are a few of our favorite Activities: 

Learn more at the PBS KIDS for Parents Xavier Riddle & and Secret Museum

Let’s Go Luna: Games, Videos & Activities

Play games and watch full episodes of Let’s Go Luna on https://pbskids.org/luna

Explore the PBS LearningMedia Let’s Go Luna Collection

“Let’s Go Luna!” is a show for kids ages 4 to 7 that follows the adventures of three friends as they travel the world with their parents’ traveling performance troupe, “Circo Fabuloso.” At each of the Circo’s stops, Luna the Moon guides the trio – Leo, a wombat from Australia; Carmen, a butterfly from Mexico; and Andy, a frog from the United States – as they get to know the local region and its people. Their adventures take them through cities around the globe where they explore the food, music, art, architecture and other features that make each place unique and wonderful.

Watch Playlist of Full Episodes:

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Here are a few of our favorite Activities: 

Learn more at the PBS KIDS for Parents Let’s Go Luna

Student Mental Health Matters Educator Toolkit

Student Mental Health Matters: A Toolkit for Educators is designed to equip educators, school staff, and school mental health professionals with critical knowledge and strategies needed to support the mental well-being of their students. Digital media resources — curated from expert mental health organizations and public media sources — cover suicide prevention, stress and anxiety, self-harm, adverse childhood experiences, and social media, and offer:       

  • Expert perspectives from mental health professionals, school administrators and educators aimed at helping teachers better understand a topic; 
  • Student perspectives that reveal the lived experience of elementary, middle, and high school students;  
  • Strategies that provide real-world applications for teachers’ practices.   

All resources and accompanying support materials are intended to be used in a professional development setting and may contain material considered sensitive to some viewers. 

Student Mental Health Matters | A Toolkit for Educators (via PBSLearningMedia.org)

Hero Elementary: Games, Videos & Activities

Play games and watch full episodes of Hero Elementary on https://pbskids.org/heroelementary

“Hero Elementary” is a school for budding superheroes, where kids learn to master their powers, like flying and teleportation, while exploring science along the way! The series aims to give children ages 4 to 7 the tools to solve problems by thinking and acting like scientists and sparking their natural curiosity and empathy.

Watch Playlist of Full Episodes:

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Here are a few of our favorite Activities: 

Learn more at the PBS KIDS for Parents Hero Elementary

Sid the Science Kid: Games, Videos & Activities

Play games and watch full episodes of Sid the Science Kids and friends on https://pbskids.org/sid

Sid the Science Kid uses comedy and music to promote exploration, discovery and science readiness among preschoolers. Sid the Science Kid features a practical in-school science curriculum and celebrates children’s natural curiosity about science in everyday life. The energetic and inquisitive Sid starts each episode with a new question (“Why are my shoes shrinking?” “Why do bananas get mushy?”) and embarks on a fun-filled day of finding answers with the help of family and friends.

WXXI Education Favorites
Here are a few of our favorite Activities: 

Learn more at the PBS KIDS for Parents Sid the Science Kid Page

Design Squad: Inventing Green Resources

Design Squad’s mission is to get kids excited about engineering and inventing. For years Design Squad, the award-winning PBS KIDS program and website, has created activities, videos and clubs that aim to make engineering and invention accessible and fun for kids. Now, Design Squad is tackling a new content area: inventing for a sustainable future. We want to get kids thinking about how engineering and invention impacts environmental sustainability and how new inventions can help tackle environmental problems.

Design Squad Global Inventing Green is the latest addition to the Design Squad family of resources that challenges youth to brainstorm solutions that can help people with things such as lack of food, clean water, renewable energy, affordable energy, and ocean and land
pollution. These resources use the same core tenants found in the other Design Squad materials such as:

  • Every child should and can participate in engineering and invention.
  • Engineering and invention are most meaningful when kids have the opportunity to solve real problems faced by real people.
  • Failing is to be embraced as a step that all engineers and inventors take in the Design Process.
  • Students should have the opportunity to lead their own learning process with guidance from an educator.
  • Hands-on learning experiences based on an open-ended problem lead to more successful experiences with engineering and invention concepts.

In the Design Squad Global Inventing Green Club PBS LearningMedia collection, the is objective: help kids build an environmental sustainability mindset when inventing. Design Squad wants kids to work to solve environmental problems with invention as well as learn to bring sustainability practices to the process of inventing. This includes thinking about material choices, where an invention goes once it has outlived its usefulness, and how an invention is powered.

Driving While Black On-Demand

Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond. Available to watch through 10/12/27.

 Driving While Black: Race, Space, and Mobility in America, a ground-breaking, two-hour documentary film by acclaimed historian Dr. Gretchen Sorin and Emmy–winning director Ric Burns. The film chronicles the riveting history and personal experiences of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond. It explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the African American experience for hundreds of years – told in large part through the stories of the men, women and children who lived through it.

Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship – and based on and inspired in large part by Gretchen Sorin’s recently published study of the way the automobile and highways transformed African American life across the 20th century –  the film examines the history of African Americans on the road from the depths of the Depression to the height of the Civil Rights movement and beyond, exploring along the way the deeply embedded dynamics of race, space and mobility in America during one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in American history.

The right to move freely and safely across the American landscape has always been unequally distributed by race and powerfully contested in the American experience.  With urgent and powerful relevance to issues and dynamics at work in American society today – of race and class, gender, safety, law enforcement, automobile culture, recreation, personal freedom and national identity – this resonant and deeply moving history is at once revelatory, troubling and deeply inspiring for what it uncovers about the long road to justice in American history, and about the creativity, courage and commitment to change that makes it possible.

Driving While Black utilizes a rich archive of material from the period — including footage, photographs, advertisements, road signs, maps, letters and legal records — and weaves together oral histories and the on-camera insights of scholars, writers, musicians and ordinary American travelers. Program website.

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