Social studies does not have to be complicated to be meaningful.
In Part 1 of this special PD series, we'll talk about five things teachers can stop doing to make social studies instruction simpler and more manageable. From trying to make every lesson exciting to grading every single assignment, we will look at common habits that can create extra work without necessarily improving student learning.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
Simplify your lesson planning
Choose fewer, more purposeful activities
Reuse classroom routines and activity formats
Focus on the most important content
Reduce unnecessary grading
The goal is not to do less teaching. It is to spend less time on things that do not meaningfully impact student learning.
I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low-prep and easy to implement, so let's dive in together
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Does this sound familiar? Welcome back to an episode of The Social Studies Teacher podcast. I am doing a little bit of a series. It's a five-week episode series, and it is all audio for this batch of episodes, so hopefully you enjoy it. Today, we're talking about something I think a lot of teachers need to hear.
You might be overcomplicating social studies, and I don't mean that you're doing anything wrong. I just mean that sometimes we create extra work for ourselves because we think an engaging lesson has to be elaborate with all the bells and whistles. But the truth is, a good social studies lesson does not need to be complicated.
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Sometimes students just need clear information. They need to listen to an explanation or examine a map, read a short passage, participate in a discussion. Those things might not look particularly exciting on Instagram or TikTok, but that doesn't mean that they aren't valuable. So thinking about the example of the American Revolution, let's say you're teaching about the causes of the American Revolution.
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And here is an important part. Engagement is not the same as entertainment. Students can be engaged when they're thinking, making connections, asking questions, and applying information. Your lessons don't have to be elaborate to accomplish those things. And I know it can be so hard in this day and age where there's so much attention going on in different directions for students because they have access to a ton of short form content and just little things will capture their attention, and if you hold them for too long, they're really gonna lose it.
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And then you realize you have about 30 minutes to accomplish all of it. I've definitely seen how easy it is for teachers to fall into this trap. We find so many different useful resources that we want to incorporate all of them, but here is what happens. We rush through everything, and students don't have enough time to process anything.
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You do not need seven different activities to teach one concept every single day, just a few activities that work together. Number three, stop creating something new for every lesson. One of the simplest ways to reduce your planning time is to develop activities that you can use again and again. One really great example is having one primary source analysis sheet.
Students use the same general questions each time they examine a new historical source. What do you notice? What does this source tell you? What questions do you still have? You can use that same sheet when you're teaching colonial America, American Revolution, Westward Expansion. The source might change, but the activity will stay the same.
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You might start explaining about the American Revolution, and suddenly you're telling students about an interesting historical figure who wasn't even part of your original lesson. They're not even part of the standards. You don't even have to mention them at this point, and before you know it, the class period is over.
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Students just need to know and understand how railroads connected communities, supported businesses, and in turn, it helped cities grow. So that would be the focus. Interesting details can add context, and it's nice to add every once in a while when you have time, but they should not take over your lesson Number five, stop thinking every assignment needs a grade.
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You can also review student work for common misconceptions without assigning a formal grade. The purpose of formative assessment is to help you decide what students need next. And of course, follow your school's grading requirements, but don't create additional grading work when a quick understanding check would accomplish the same instructional goal.
At my schools that I've been at, social studies was only a one grade a week thing. This was in third, fourth, and fifth grade. You only needed one social studies grade, and so that was the minimum I did. I did the bare minimum. Every once in a while, I'll throw in an extra activity if we had another assignment, but for the most part, I always stuck to that minimum requirement that we needed.
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The goal is not to do less teaching. It's to eliminate the unnecessary work so that you can focus on what actually helps students learn. And speaking of simplifying instruction, next week in this series, we are going to be talking about something I see all the time, students who have an informational slideshow but aren't quite sure how to turn it into a complete lesson.
We will be discussing how to move beyond just simply presenting the information and creating opportunities for students to actually learn it. Thank you so much for listening to the Social Studies Teacher Podcast. I will talk to you again next time. Thanks for listening to the Social Studies Teacher Podcast.
