🎉 Plan the First 10 Days of Social Studies with Me! 🎉

In today’s episode, we’re planning out the first 10 days of your social studies block together. Whether you teach 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade, this episode is packed with low-prep, engaging activities to help you start the year strong.

I’ll walk you through:

✔️ How to build classroom community from Day 1

✔️ Tips for setting up interactive notebooks

✔️ When (and how!) to introduce warmups and guided lessons

✔️ How to gradually build routines for a smooth year ahead

✔️ Examples of what I used to do in my own upper elementary classroom

Even if you have 20 or 30 minutes for social studies, you’ll find helpful ideas you can tweak to fit your schedule and grade level.

Related Blog Posts

🔗 Fun SS Activities for the 1st Week of School

🔗 Fun SS Activities for the 2nd Week of School

🔗 How to Set Up Interactive Notebooks

Mentioned Resources:

🛒 Back-to-School Social Studies Activities

🛒 Interactive SS Notebook Covers

🛒 Daily Social Studies Warmups + Guided Curriculum

Download the free back to school guide for Texas Teachers!

Mentioned in this episode:

Social Studies Guided Curriculum

Easy-to-follow lesson plans and activities for social studies - just print and teach! The complete bundles for Communities, Texas History, and U.S. History are available. Click the link to learn more!

Learn more about the Smart and Simple Social Studies Guided Curriculum!

5 Social Studies Guided Notes

Get guided notes covering 5 common social studies topics that are low-prep and easy to use as reference guides, anchor charts, and more!

Grab the Free Guided Notes!

But first, before we get started, please like, subscribe and comment, share whatever you can do to get this podcast out to other social studies teachers who also teach upper elementary. I would truly appreciate it if you spread the word about this new show on YouTube for season three. And of course, you can always listen to this podcast episode in your earbuds, wherever you love to listen to podcasts.

Today I'm gonna be walking through a simple plan that combines classroom community building warmups, some notebook setup, and some light content introduction. We are keeping things engaging, low prep, and totally doable 'cause I know you have a ton of other things to worry about in those first few weeks of school.

So I wanna make it as easy as possible for you if you're teaching social studies. I'm gonna be sharing with you specific examples as if I were teaching third grade in the classroom this upcoming school year. So even though you may or may not be teaching third grade, there are going to be some ideas that could be super helpful for you.

Okay, starting with week one, the most important thing to note is that you are not gonna go in. Full force teaching social studies content. Doesn't matter what you're expected to teach. We want to focus on getting to know our class and getting to know each other and for the students to get to know you.

Students on the first couple of weeks of school. So just wanted to point that out. So the very first day of school, of course, I would start off with a classroom community building activity and we would start notebooks set up for our social studies, interactive notebooks. This is the day where you really do not know your students unless you have a heads up and have some intel in how they are.

From the previous teachers, but let it be known that just because they were a certain way for a teacher in the past doesn't mean they will be like that for you for this school year. So give every single student a chance and just to keep things easy and light. I would recommend the getting to know you back to school activity.

But this is just some. Thing to get them started, get their feet wet, and that you can kind of understand how they are and if they are willing to work around the room or work with other people. Even on the first day, they might be talkers. They might be a really quiet class. This is the perfect stepping stone into getting them situated.

The first day is really about getting the pages numbered and the tabs glued in. And decorating can start on this first day, but depending on time, you might have to carry it over to the next day. But as long as they have at least the pages numbered and all the tabs and all the labels and all of that stuff, they can focus on the decorating for a little bit of this first day.

They're going to go up and find people who might have. Certain characteristic that's in one of the little bingo squares, so if it matches, they have to go around and ask, do you have a brother? Do you have a sister? Or whatever the prompts may be. Then that person signs their name in the box and you can make this fun.

They don't always have to have pencil. They can have their favorite color marker or pen, and they're just signing their name. Where applicable, and they are trying to get a blackout or five in a row or whatever you decide. And you can also, at the end of this, have the opportunity for students to share their bingos.

They enjoy something from a magazine so that they can glue onto their front of these social studies, interactive notebooks. And then day two is about putting it all together and they get to decorate the front of their notebook. Day number three is, you guessed it. Another classroom community building activity. This one has a little twist because they are learning all about the teacher. You can do a slideshow with information about yourself, and in this activity they have to write three interesting facts that they learn about you.

A brief paragraph with some comprehension questions in their multiple choice, and you can assign one per day. This is a great bell ringer activity, and usually by the middle of the first week, especially with the older grade levels, we've kind of finished. Setting up and putting away a lot of the supplies that they might have brought in the first day of school.

So we have a little bit more extra time. And so it's usually the middle of the first week where I would introduce warmups for the year. Warmups are something where my students would come in and that would be the first thing they do. They would get their warmups at the beginning of the week and they had a warmup folder where they stored their activities, and then at the end of the week, they would turn it.

So I would introduce a warmup by going with. Having students read the paragraph, answer the questions, and then you check it together as a class. So give them about five minutes to read and answer the three questions, and then together you go over the questions and the correct answers and you can have them grade their.

Alright, moving on to day number. Four. This is Thursday. It's probably a time where you might lose your voice. If you are like me and you talked a lot the first week of school, you're probably a little bit tired or a lot tired, but that's okay because you'll be able to have some more classroom community building activities for students to look forward to.

And all that stuff. They are coming together in your class as one. Big Mosaic puzzle, and it's just a nice little way to show how you are a tight-knit classroom community that relies on each other and is it's a safe place to be in and even before you have it assembled on a nice wall. You can have students after they finish completing their jigsaw puzzle, they can share out to the class if they feel comfortable.

Different paragraph, different questions, same topic if you choose to do that. And same process. This time they know that they have their warmup already in their folder. If you make copies of it in advance for the week, you can have them get it out. They're reading the paragraph, they're doing the three questions.

Wait a little bit. They can read a book or, you know, work on anything that they haven't finished up. I usually had a work in progress folder where if they didn't finish their work that needed to be graded, that needed to be turned in, whatever it might be, they would put it all in their work in progress folder.

And that's kind of an eye time or independent time, what they could work on if they're done early with something. So that's just a suggestion if you want to incorporate that into your school year. But with that, after the five or so minutes, you would check again as a class going over the questions and.

If you do anything, it might be a completion grade, but because it's something that's done together as a class, I don't recommend grading it and assessing what they know. Based off of warmups the final day of the first week, I would wrap it up with. Two classroom community building activities. The two I'm picking for day five is the class constitution and the time capsule.

It is always good to have something up on the board to have for. Everybody to agree on. And so I would sit down and talk about rules, why we have rules, why they're important. You can relate it to how our country has rules also known as the Constitution, and that's kind of how different bills and different laws are based off of.

Us that is reasonable to have. So some things that come off from the top of my head, at our school, this was a school-wide thing where they would come up with each class, each homeroom class would have their own class set of rules or constitution. Along with, of course, the main school rules, but just give students the opportunity to brainstorm important things to them that would make their classroom a safe learning environment where they feel comfortable asking questions, answering questions.

In our main paper that's included in the resource pack I have for you. And then there's the time capsule. This is another fun one that you're gonna have to keep until the end of the year, for obvious reasons. 'cause it's a time capsule and they're answering some quick questions related to this moment in time.

Now let's go into week number two, day six. The first thing we are going to do is because they understand, hopefully, I always printed the whole week's warmup in advance for students. I would copy them front and back, staple them, give it to them the first day of the week, and they would either turn it in or take it home at the end of the week.

So. For the warmups I have, there's four comprehension passages and questions for each topic. And then there is a weekly quiz at the end, so you could do the quiz or not do the quiz. It's up to you, but there's gonna be a total of four, so I would make a copy days one through four, front and back, staple it.

So with that, you can have that. Remind them of how it works, where they're working on it on their own independently as much as they can. And they check answers with the teacher after around five minutes or however long you may need, but not too long, of course. And then they put it in their warmup folder and you start the next task.

Every single thing for lesson one, for unit one, I would wanna just start off with the slideshow and the guided notes. 'cause remember we already set up our interactive notebooks last week, so what I would have them do is practice taking guided notes and. Talk about what that would look like, where we would find the notes.

Because believe it or not, students may or may not have experience with taking guided notes and they may not know how to take notes, even if it is fill in the blank notes. So I would make sure students have the opportunity and you have the opportunity to teach 'em basically how. Good note taking works and what you would do.

They're gluing it in, and I always had our students have a table of contents and every time we had a new guided notes activity they would put in the day. So the date, whatever it is, let's say September 1st, and they would write the topic. So introduction to map elements and the page numbers. I would always have them do front and back.

The slideshow itself for this particular lesson is pretty short in general, and you may or may not use all the terms included in the guided notes either way. Now, a lot of week one had the classroom community building activities and week two is kind of, uh, if you have time. If you have extra time, you can always do it.

So for today, I would have this kind of tentatively penciled in, it's called My Place in the World, and students are kind of taking a look at where they are with. Where they live and their country, their city state, and so on and so forth. So they're answering the prompts and kind of reflecting on that.

And then you can do another classroom community building activity such as. My hometown and they're answering the prompts based off of the hometown and different characteristics of where they're from. We're almost done. We are at Wednesday and Thursday because they're very similar days, eight and nine.

The practice activities are varied, but depending on what the topic is. But with that all together, that should total around 30 minutes. With the guided notes, the slideshow are pretty quick. You can talk about it and discuss and then go into the practice activity, and that would be what they would finish off their social studies block for days eight and nine.

Warmup, which for day five, if you're doing all of the different activities for the topic, this would be the quiz. So the first graded work that's independent, so it's seven question, multiple choice quiz on that topic. Then you can go into the guided lesson and slideshow activity. The warmup itself because it's seven questions, multiple choice.

But do you see how in the first week we're really focusing on classroom community, and then second week it, there's still some classroom community going on reviewing routines and rules and procedures, but then you're also starting to get into the actual content of the grade. And topic that you're gonna be teaching throughout the year.

And I kind of also scaffolded in, I guess is the word, the different parts of what will be in the full social studies block. So first we kept practicing warmup, then we added in the practice activity, and then lastly the exit ticket. And you could even move the exit ticket because there's already a quiz on that Friday.

Hopefully kind of eases things and gives you some ideas of how you can introduce different parts of your social studies block. The guided curriculum units that I mentioned as well as. The warmups that I mentioned and the back to school activities that I mentioned, and the interactive notebook activities that I mentioned are all in my TPT store or my website store.

So you can go in and purchase it there. And if you are a member of the smart and simple Social Studies membership. All of that is in there as well. You just have to go by domain and then go into the topic that you're gonna be teaching for the first couple of weeks, and you'll be able to find it there.

So there's just a couple of differences in the all access versus just purchasing a one-off resource. All right. Well hopefully this is. A helpful episode. It's a long one I already can see, but I wanted to go in depth of how I would be teaching social studies for the first couple of weeks of school, and I hope this is helpful and informative for you.

So thanks for tuning in, watching, listening, whatever you're doing. I am excited for the next topic in a couple weeks, so I will talk to you