If you are still doing the old-school read through the chapter in the textbook method of teaching social studies, I implore you to please stop the insanity.  Another win-win is doing learning stations, which is a fancy name for centers. Yet another tip I talked about in my “Art of the Social Studies Teacher Hustle” post was the name game. Give an activity a fancy name (kind of like learning stations versus centers) and it automatically makes it more interesting.

There are many different ways that you can set up stations in your classroom. And first off, this is not something that I would do every day. Sounds like a great Friday afternoon activity to me! I tried it a few ways. If I would have only taught Social Studies, I would have done stations more regularly. I had to squeeze in Science, too. I’m just telling you what worked for me in hopes that it will spark ideas for what can work for you with your current roster of kiddos! It varies depending on your class and the current content. You may have a class with multiple behavior problems which limits your ability to do hands-on stuff. And it is perfectly acceptable to have one student (or more!) not participate. Their station can be a traditional workbook. Don’t think I didn’t go there. I did!

Model 1: Guided Social Studies/Workshop Model

 The “Guided Social Studies” method was structured like I had done Math Workshop in the past. I started with a 15 minute mini lesson followed by 45 minutes of station time. This was split into 3 rotations of 15 minutes. This was the ideal theory, in practice did not always happen! I split the kids into 3 groups. My class size was 24ish so worked out to be about 8. I would not suggest more than 8 kids in a rotation.

 The three stations were: a teacher-led small group, a partner activity or small group game, and the other was independent seat work (sit down and be quiet kind of thing). The partner activity was always something that was a review. New content would be introduced in the small group with the teacher. The independent station would usually be something for a grade that was due that week.

Disclaimer-I did let certain kids sit on the floor for independent work as a bribe occasionally. Oops, I mean incentive. It works, trust me!

 Whatever I planned for the partner/small group was something that didn’t really matter if it was finished. It was usually review or extra practice. That way if needed the “loud” activity got the boot!! And another reason was I welcomed students who needed more help to stay at the guided station with me more than one round. Often a second go clarified the content! I had some kids sit through all three times!! And sometimes the kids wouldn’t feel comfortable physically staying there but would choose to sit super close by where my station was so they could listen in. That was fine with me!

 #spoiler I have also done choice boards and menus and a whole slew of other options. We don’t want to border into War and Peace territory with the content in this post so stand by for more on that!

But wait…there’s more……you can do this with primary students, too!! I unexpectedly ended up teaching 1st grade a few years ago and you better believe I did stations with them, too! The format was usually teacher activity, technology, and partner matching cards, etc. Buddy reading content related books was a very popular station idea, too! Lots of times I combined Daily 5 with Social Studies content. See this short video below for an example! You can find the Founding Fathers and Me Cards by clicking the picture under it.

Founding Fathers and Me Cards: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Founding-Fathers-and-Me-Sorting-Cards-3533734

Model 2: “Floating Teacher”

The other model I used was to have five or six stations and I would float. This was awesome when I had a student teacher! I would kind of feel out which one needed the most explanation to start.  Or I would just spend time traveling to keep the kids productive!! If you do this many stations, you can plan on taking a couple of days for the students to get through all of them. Hey, and this way you have lesson plans done for multiple days! I chose this option like when I bought a set a stations on Teachers Pay Teachers that included 5 activities!

General Station Procedures

I didn’t use any kids of fancy pants Pinterest-worthy rotation. For SS, it isn’t as necessary to have targeted small groups. However, students who struggle with reading will obviously need more help. Literacy and SS go hand in hand.  So I would often use table groups or mix/match based on behavior. I would usually just write the stations on the board and write a number beside it. I think one year I had a piece of poster board with Velcro numbers I would rotate. I would just have a signal or flip the lights when it was almost time to rotate and I would have the stations numbered and they were just rotate clockwise. I even sometimes used a clip from the song Pause by Pitbull as a 2 minute countdown. Just more fun that way haha!!

2019 Update: I made a Google Slide with the stations and embedded a YouTube Timer and projected it on the smartboard. I put a kid in charge of managing it!

Especially ELL Station Ideas

   A great idea for stations for English language learners is always a technology station if possible!  If you look at the list of helpful websites in the last post of the series you’ll see several ideas for sites that any student could be on during social studies. If you need suggestions for Social Studies sites, of course I have a bazillion and one on here. Just use the search bar above!

  • buddy reading picture books
  • readers’ theatre scripts
  • matching cards
  • sequencing event cards
  • labeling maps
  • drawing a battle scene

Integrated Thematic Stations

Sometimes you have to think outside the box….everyyyydayyyyyy if it wasn’t @fortnite , it was football my 5th grade boys of my 2018-2019 wanted to talk about. So I decided that in honor of the Superbowl we would have Football Friday stations. And to make it work for those kiddos that could care less about football, I threw in some Atlanta stuff and other landmark/geography! I pulled a huge stack of books from the library for a buddy reading station and supplemented it with some cool atlases. We are also doing a web quest, landmark research, and a cool persuasive writing freebie I found from @wiseguystpt! I decided that if any students don’t want to write about that topic, they can write about whether or not schools should make the Monday after the big day a holiday or not.

I did these stations differently. There were 8 in all and I basically gave the class all day that Friday and Monday to work on them. I gave them a basic Google Doc just to highlight and had them put all station work in an envelope to make things easier. I gave the students suggested timeline for how long each station should take and gave guidance for starting points.

Football Stations:

I also did special Veterans’ Day stations which you can see here:

Check out the rest of the blog series here:

The ideas in this blog series are the framework of my e-book. Click the picture to check it out!

ebook cover image