ANDREA RUNNELS
It’s that time of year!! Back to School Season has arrived and the smell of fresh pencils is in the air and streets are buzzing with the frenzy of teachers and kiddos alike rushing to get that perfect first day of school haircut! No matter what type of school setting you are teaching in, one thing stays the same. We all want our Social Studies space to be set up for success!
What comes to mind when organizing and decorating a space for Social Studies? Visualize every classroom scene you can from television shows and movies. What did you spot? A dusty globe and a faded map with an apple sitting on the teacher’s desk. Those days are over! I’m on a mission to “Bring Social Studies Back!” And to do that we need to make it engaging and interactive. And that starts with your learning environment!
Building Community
We also need to factor in multiple learning styles, personalities, backgrounds, and interests! When you connect students to the content, they are invested in the subject! How about instead of just hanging up that same old map (or leaving it hanging on the wall getting more faded by the year) you make it student-focused? Have students come up with a way to label places they have lived or countries of origin. This is a great way to build community with your learners! Include places you have lived, too!
You could even extend the idea and have students bring in an object that represents their family or pictures. And you could extend the extension by making it a writing assignment. I mean I could keep extending it and you will have a whole week’s worth of activities but I digress (if ya need it feel free to hit me up on the contact form haha). You see my point! I had a community bulletin board where I hung up family pictures and mementos that students could add to throughout the year. This really made kids feel like the classroom was their own space therefore they took pride in taking care if it!
Interactive Bulletin Boards
Also last year instead of just boring maps, I set up a bulletin board featuring U.S. Landmarks. I always start the year with basic geography and map skills. Trust me your students need it whether they have pigtails and a My Little Pony book bag or are sporting a cross-body hipster satchel with a laptop hanging out. I also knew I would have lots of English Language Learners who may not be familiar with some of the iconic images. It was so neat to have students “spy” the places they may have read about or even visited! I had one student who had transferred from New York and it made him feel so good to have a little piece of home in our room! Well, I have truly upped the ante with this activity and turned it in to a huge iSPY U.S. Landmark bundle!
Get to know your kiddos the first few days with those “All About Me/Welcome Back” activities but then move on to same content that will be fun and help build foundations for what you will be covering the entire school year or just for getting to know America! Click on the picture to check it out!
****This giveaway is closed but you can still check out the great posts from my S.S. posse!!
And even better, I have a way for you to really map out that space! I have teamed up with some other Social Studies stores to offer a giveaway!! Enter the giveaway here (ok, true story I would totally do that first) and then check out their tips for making this the BEST SOCIAL STUDIES EVER!! An InLinkz Link-up