Teacher and Student Resources
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West offers these many resources for teachers and students, including tour maps, Skype in the Classroom lessons, and our Education Opportunities Guide.
Interactive 360 Online Adventure
Come explore the habitats of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem using this engaging interactive! Learn about this special ecosystem and the amazing animals that live there with 360 photos, immersive videos, activities and content. This resource is perfect for students, teachers, and families! And, teachers—all content is standards and inquiry based with built in assessment tools.
Click here to explore 360 Adventure
Former Center Educator Megan Smith recently took viewers on the 360 Adventure through a Live Skype in the Classroom event! Click here to watch the video and explore.
Clues for the Classroom
This is your non-stop shop for content standards and skills based digital resources. Access videos, primary sources, activities, and lesson plans grouped by subject and state benchmarks. Visit the following content areas on Clues for the Classroom.
Indian Education for All Professional Development Modules
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West offers an Indian Education for All Teacher Professional Development course for Professional Teaching Standards Board Credit. Look for information about our 2021 – 2022 school year offerings coming soon!
Are you interested in information about upcoming professional development courses and resources to use in the classroom? Please fill out this brief form, so we can keep you updated on professional development and resources. Contact Heather Bender at [email protected] or 307-578-4096 for more information.
Free Professional Development Opportunities
The Center is excited to offer some exciting new professional development opportunities. For more information about these workshops, e-mail Gretchen Henrich or contact her at 307-578-4061.
Bringing Primary Sources Alive in Your Classroom
Primary resource challenge – think outside the box! During this professional development session, teachers will dive into the availability of online collections, library archives, art, and three-dimensional objects to use as primary resources. Teacher’s will leave with the tools to create their own lesson that they can bring back to their classroom. Center educators can design a program based on your specific needs.
What’s Art Got to Do with Science and Culture?
Let’s get creative in how teachers can bring art into their classroom. During this workshop, teachers will bring an interdisciplinary approach into how they can use art when covering content areas such as science, social studies, literacy, culture, and even math.
What’s the Story: Teaching with Objects in Your Classroom to Facilitate Student Centered-Learning
Did you every think different kinds of shoes have a story? Or maybe, different hats? Together we’ll work with teachers to uncover the hidden stories about objects centered around our Plains Indian collection at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Then teachers can take what they’ve learned back to their classroom. Visit our Skype in the Classroom page to learn more about this professional development experience.
Guided Experiences — Onsite and Virtual
The Center offers onsite guided experiences and live virtual field trips about the history, culture, art, and natural history of the American West.
Contact Gretchen Henrich or visit the links below for more information or to register for these immersive and interactive experiences for your students.
Guided Field Trip Experiences
Visit the Center on a field trip and schedule a guided experience that puts your students at the center of their learning as they learn about the history, culture, art, and natural history of the American West.
Virtual Field Trip Experiences
Is it too far to visit us in person? We offer all of many of onsite guided experiences as live virtual field trips.
Teacher Guides for our Guided Experiences and Virtual Field Trips
The following guides are available for teachers to print. Each guide contains objectives, standards, pre- and post-visit activities, and a resource list. Click on the images below for each tour to view its teacher guide.
Plains Indian Map Project
This Plains Indian Map—created with generous funding from The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston—is a fusion of scholarship and educational interpretation. The map represents 230 years of movement on the Plains amongst more than 45 different Indian cultures. Territorial, treaty, reservation, and state boundaries flow in an animated timeline.
The innovative scholarship and interpretation showcased in this map is recommended for a broad audience, including K–12 teachers and students. Viewers can pause the online animation at any point to study a particular map.
Scavenger Hunts
Scavenger Hunts available!
Please print scavenger hunts for your students prior to your field trip visit. This document contains scavenger hunts for all museums, including the Plains Indian Museum.
Indian Education for All K-12 Resources
Visit our Indian Education for All Resources page to access all our onsite, outreach, and online offerings that meet Montana and Wyoming’s Indian Education for All component in these state’s Social Studies Standards.
Other Resources for Your Classroom
Lending Materials
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West also offers outreach trunks, learning kits, and DVDs on a variety of subjects, including western art, history, culture, Yellowstone natural history, and more. Click here to find out the details and submit a request online.
Online Games and Interactives
Don’t miss our new online games and interactives—as fun as they are educational.
Videos
Check out the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s YouTube Channel for fun and informative videos.
Greater Yellowstone Sights and Sounds
Click here for short video clips, perfect for illustrating a school project.
Wyoming and Montana State Standards
All of our school services meet Wyoming and Montana state standards. Please click on the link below to view our standards correlation chart.