7 Fun Social Studies Activities that Students Will Love

Kirsten 0:00

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.

Hi, there, welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast, you may or may not have noticed that I changed up the intro and outro recently wasn't feeling the first one. I'm definitely liking how it's sounding now. And I'm going to keep it that way. All right, today we're going to be talking about seven Social Studies activities that upper elementary students love. I know that whether students are in third grade, or fifth grade, I've been in both grades. They love things where you get to let them talk and get up and move around the classroom, or even work outside of the classroom even better. As a social studies teacher, I was always looking for those types of ways to incorporate these activities in my lesson plans so that they can get more involved in what they were learning. These seven activities that I'm going to share with you will make your students want to learn more about the topics being taught. These are fun and educational ideas. And by incorporating these seven Social Studies activities in your lessons, you will no doubt see improvement in student engagement in your classroom, as well as improvement in learning. So without further ado, let's go into it.

All right, so the first one I want to mention is a daily review. At the beginning or end of each class, you can take a few minutes to review what was covered in the previous lesson. This can easily be done through a quick quiz, a daily passage, a short discussion, or even a game. Not only does this help reinforce the material learned, but it also keeps students engaged and interested in the subject. Plus, it only takes a few minutes to prepare each day. Something that I do have in my TPT store and membership are comprehension passages. Very similar to what you might see with daily grammar or daily reading or daily math. It takes five to 10 minutes a day. And there is a passage for every day of the year and then some you basically can assign one per day. So let's say map skills. There. Here's one for Monday through Thursday, and then Friday is a seven question quiz. These passages are super short, you just have them read the passage, and then they answer the three questions. And then you can check those as a class. So you're not only getting in those social studies skills, you're also reinforcing those reading comprehension skills. So it's always kind of nice to kill two birds with one stone.

The second one is current events. I mentioned this one well in the last episode, but I want to mention it again, because it's just really a really, really easy prep way to get students thinking about social studies. This can be done by assigning articles or news segments for students to read or watch, and then just leading a class discussion about the topic. This not only helps students stay up to date on current events around the world, but it also encourages critical thinking and analysis of the world around them. Plus, of course, it's minimal prep and can be easily incorporated to any social studies lesson, you can do it at the beginning of class or at the end of class, CNN 10 is really great resource for I'd say, fifth grade, and even fourth grade. There's a lot of great news segments in there, and it usually not as biased as some other news sources. So you can always check out CNN 10 preview it in advance if you're not quite sure, but it's always interesting for students to watch and they like to discuss it afterwards.

The third one is simulations. I'm bringing this one back as well. simulations and role playing activities are a really great way to engage students, you could have students simulate a historical event, or roleplay. As a historical figure. This could allow students to experience history in a more interactive and memorable way. And it can help them better understand the perspective is and motivations of different people throughout history. These activities might require a little bit more prep time, but the payoff is well worth it. Just be sure, again, to be sensitive to topics in history, we don't want to do a simulation or role playing activity on manifest destiny. And you know, all of the different aspects of what happened when settlers were moving west and what happened to indigenous groups as people were being kicked out of their land. So we do not want to roleplay or simulate any of those types of events.

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All right, number five guided notes. These are another great way to help students stay focused and engaged during presentations. You can provide students with a partially completed note taking sheet that would include key terms and concepts and questions related to the topic. When you present the information, students can fill in the missing information and add their own notes. This can help students stay organized and also retain important information. Plus, it's of course, easy prep. I have the free guided notes sample that you can check out at the Southern teach.com forward slash social studies. And you can get five free guided notes, one is partially filled out and one is completely filled out. And there's five topics for all of that. Lesson plans are also included for all four of those topics.

Number six project based learning. Project Based Learning is a really great way to engage students you can assign a project that would require students to research and present on a specific topic, such as a historical event or some type of cultural tradition. You can encourage creativity and collaboration. You can have them work in groups or independently or in pairs and then they can present third project to the class. This hands on approach to learning will not only help students retain information, but it also will develop important skills like critical thinking and problem solving. Something we did with our class, our whole grade level, we did a grade level PBL project on the American Revolution. And they had to side with a different perspective. So there were the indigenous groups. So that was one perspective, the French, the loyalists, the Patriots the neutral list, so different sides of the American Revolution, and kind of present their research what they found about that particular group, and they had to create some type of presentation and also some type of visual. I remember one group, they did one on the French whose perspective of the American Revolution and their role. And they created a diorama and also a slideshow presentation. And we had a grade level PBL expo where we invited parents to come look and admin came as well. And we actually had the admins select some PBL projects to make it to the next round where they would be going to, I believe some district PBL Expo, it took a lot of prep. But in a way, I think it's easy prep in that you give them you have some type of foundation, but there are they're the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It's you know, mostly student inquiry based, they're researching the information, you're giving them the tools to research, but they're ultimately the ones creating the content, you just give them that work time, it takes several weeks, if not more, you know, a month or more. So it's easy prep in that you have certain things that you do have to do in advance, but they are mostly doing a lot of the work and it's spread out for a long period of time.

Number seven is problem solving activities. These can give a great opportunity for students to develop problem solving skills, try incorporating activities that require students to analyze and solve real world problems such as creating a budget for a family, or designing a community service project. These activities not only engage students, but they also help them develop important life skills that would serve them well beyond the classroom. This was kind of a little bit of a PBL activity. But also it was a problem based PBL activity. This was another type of project based learning activity that we did with our fifth graders. But they had to create a country. And it had to utilize energy efficient tools to power the country. So it was kind of twofold where they created the country, they got to create whatever the country was, but the resources used had to be energy efficient, and good for the environment.

All right, so to recap, those seven Social Studies activities that I think are pretty fun and engaging. Number one, daily review number two current events, number three simulations. Number four, read alouds. Number five guided notes, number six, project based learning and number seven, problem solving activities. Each of these are easy prep in different ways. Some, you don't really, you just kind of have to give a prompt, and they are the ones going with it with research. But then others are pretty easy prep in that you just need to put on a video or assign a passage that they read. And they're going to be you know, answering the questions.

I want you to pick at least two that you will commit to utilizing this school year. Maybe you might want to use read alouds and guided notes. Maybe you're going to commit to project based learning activity once every semester one in the fall when in the spring. That's what we did. Maybe you want to try doing current events and read alouds whatever combination whichever activities sparked your interest, I highly recommend you incorporate that so that it keeps students on their toes.

All right. Well, that is the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope that I can talk to you again next week. Have a wonderful 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

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