We all know that time is always a problem for teachers. There are simply not enough hours in the day to teach all that we're expected to teach. It's just not possible. Believe me, I've tried, and have never been successful! Due to testing and district and/or state requirements,
Teaching Reading Through Social Studies and Science
In this post, I've shared a few of my favorite ways to teach reading and writing through social studies and science content.
In all my years teaching and working with teachers, I've never once heard a teacher say that it was easy to teach all standards within the year. Trust
Teaching American Government
Teaching American government doesn't have to be boring or overly complicated. We all know it's a challenging concept to teach. Government is an abstract topic that students have a difficult time making connections to all of the concepts, and the vocabulary is very difficult for
Economics Lessons-Say Goodbye to Boring
There are SO MANY fun ways to make economics lessons engaging and hands-on for students, and it's a great way to incorporate a little math into instruction. This post shares some of my favorite ways to teach economics to upper elementary students.
I begin my economics unit by
The Simplest Government Lesson You’ll Ever Teach
Have you ever had a moment when every single students' eyes were completely glazed over, and you were pretty sure no one actually heard what you were saying? That was me on Thursday. I was seven days into my government unit, and I thought we were doing pretty good. Students had
Transform Social Studies and Science – Assessment
Assessment. Now that's a loaded word in education circles. The past few years I've been in so many meetings about assessment that I feel like just hearing the word makes my head want to spin. I'm certainly not going to try to condense everything into one blog post, so please
Transform Social Studies and Science – Application
At this point in the process, students are ready to show what they know. I often refer to Bloom's taxonomy as I create these lessons, and I frequently have students analyze and evaluate. However, my favorite method is to allow students to apply what they've learned by creating
Transform Social Studies and Science – Exploration Activities
Somewhere along the way, we've been made to feel like teaching facts is wrong, but that's not the case at all. There is a basic level of information students need to know to be able to perform performance tasks and higher level thinking activities. One of my all time favorite
Transform Social Studies and Science – Presenting Content
Presenting content has historically been my least favorite component of teaching social studies and science. I feel that I often either overuse or underuse this part of instruction. Before we begin, let's recap where we are at this point in the series:
Organize your
Transform Social Studies and Science – Mini Units
Before we dive in to the nitty gritty of social studies and science instruction, I think it's important to look at the big picture of developing unit plans. Last summer I wrote about how I map out my unit plans for the year, which you can read about here. If you haven't read it
