Kirsten 1:06
This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm curious to know if you southern teach an educator and mom who is passionate about all things, social studies, I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.
As we know, Social Studies is typically a subject that gets taught if there's extra time, or like I had to do a couple years teaching it two to three days in the week. But what if there was an easy way to incorporate social study skills every day of the week, for just five to 10 minutes a day, I want to share with you a little bit about how you can implement a few activities with your third, fourth and fifth grade students in a short amount of time. I'm also going to share with you why Social Studies is important. Some ways we can find the time to teach social studies and what this really great activity package includes.
All right, so first off, why does social studies even matter? Well, coming from somebody who is having a podcast about being a social studies teacher, it is so so important. It should not just be emphasized in middle school in high school, it needs to start as early as possible. Social Studies is at the elementary level, typically broken down into five major domains. There's geography, history, culture, society, civics and government. And then there's economics. There have been studies that have shown that increased instructional time and social studies is also associated with an improved reading ability. The studies have also shown that the sequence of social studies instruction ensures students accumulate knowledge and develop skills over time. So the sequence makes the difference as well. Effective social studies programs will combine content and stay aligned standards with academically rigorous tasks and assessments. If that went over your head, what I mean is, the main thing is Social Studies is so important. It's important for students to be well versed in their communities, culture, and rules understand their country and State's history and just be aware of where they are in the world. So there's so much that goes into it just relating to having those tasks that also are combined with the content. But of course, easier said than done right?
It can be still hard to find the time to teach social studies in general, reading comprehension, and writing, and math, those are all heavily emphasized at the elementary level. So it's really hard to be able to find that extra time we got to pull out from wherever where the sun don't shine, to teach important social studies, skills. A lot of states don't test Social Studies until middle or high school level. But social studies can be integrated seamlessly in a daily schedule in easy quick ways, such as, morning work, small group stations, it can be also directly taught and reviewed with students in a short span of time.
And so that's kind of part of why I created Smart and Simple Social Studies. This is like, like, literally the reason is because I like realized there's really not a lot of time to teach social studies. And I always am trying to, you know, prevent picking and pulling from a bunch of different things that are not necessarily fitting with my state's curriculum. And so that kind of goes into why I created the daily passages. The review bundle is for upper elementary teachers who are basically looking for a minimal prep way to incorporate social studies. And it's also just because I'm from Texas, has a special alignment to social studies, TEKS, but can be used really with any state because there's so many topics available. The bundle focuses on the five major social studies domains that I mentioned earlier. And each topic will span throughout the course of the week. So starting with Monday through Thursday, you've got those four days of student friendly passages, and they're super informative. They're very short, easy to read. And for each day, there's a set of multiple choice questions, then at the end of the week can be done either on a Friday or as homework, there is a cumulative weekly multiple choice quiz. It can be done in conjunction with your state social studies curriculum, and they can be used in any order. There's no specific order, but I do give specific extra things. So one of those extra things has to do with pacing guides, there is a TEKS unit pacing guide that aligns with TEKS social studies standards, but again, any topic it can be used in any order that meets the needs of your students and state standards. Another thing it includes are the weekly topics for each domain for each unit. There are a variety of topics to choose from. There are four, again for daily informative and student friendly passages through multiple choice questions each day. And then at the end is a cumulative multiple choice quiz. And then on top of that, there is a glossary of key vocabulary words that are also included with each topic. The way it's paced out, it's really flexible. I have it labeled as day one, day two, day three, day four, you can utilize it as a warmup for Monday through Thursday. You can also have it just as homework or stations. And then any topics that aren't used can be assigned as extra practice or review. Another part of this daily Social Studies passages are the answer keys. Of course, I cannot like not have that. But there is an answer key included for the daily activities and quizzes to make it easy to grade. This is also great for subs and makes it easy for students to self check at the end when they're finished. Lastly, I have a digital version for each topic. The Google Slides are for the daily activities, and then the weekly quiz is through Google Forms. This is great for distance learning, or just to assign as makeup work for students.
So if this all sounds amazing, and you're like, Well, where was I for this, you can buy it on TPT. But if you're wanting a little free trial, you can actually go in the show notes. There is a free download, you can try a free week of the social studies daily review, try it out, see if you like it.
And you can purchase one or more of the domains. I've got each domain geography, history, culture, society, civics, government and economics separately and you can also buy the bundle at a discount as well.
And on top of that, if you're like whoa, this is great, like awesome, but I need a little bit more than just you know a five to 10 minute daily passages. That's where I have my Smart and Simple Social Studies teacher membership. You can check the show notes for the link for that, more information on that when it's going to be available. But there are monthly and annual memberships available. It's super easy as far as it's just basically a plethora of resources, pick a domain, and then you can pick your topic that you're doing search it, there's downloads for each topic that you might be that you might be teaching at a certain period of time. So that's something that can be really beneficial if you're looking for something even more comprehensive.
All right, well, that's the end of this episode. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and rest of your week. Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.Something that I really enjoyed when teaching with my fifth graders is a nonfiction unit, all about chocolate. We talked about the history of chocolate, and how it's made and what it starts as all the way up to all the different products that we can make from chocolate. This was a really fun and engaging unit that students always loved. And we ended this unit with a chocolate festival with tons of delicious chocolate treats. And I'm excited to share that I have this exact unit available for purchase in my TPT store. This is the story of chocolate nonfiction unit for upper elementary. This is a great three week unit where you can guide students along the journey of chocolate with informational passages. And they're learning a lot of really fun information and practicing different vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. And of course, you cannot have a unit without a project rubric, assessments and so much more. If that's something you're interested in, you can head over to the link in my description. It's also available in my TPT store. My name is the Southern teach and I hope you can definitely check this out for your next unit in the coming months.
