The tired stereotype of the history teacher at the front of the room lecturing from bell to bell, droning on about nothing but names, places, and dates, and never noticing the kids sleeping in the back row needs to be thrown out the window! In its place, how about a teacher that never lectures but instead provides students time to work hands on with the content and apply their learning from bell to bell?
With Flipped Learning, this is possible in every social studies classroom!
Anyone else hear Martina McBride belting out a hit when you read that title?
For the majority of you (I hope), it is summer break and you aren’t spending too much time thinking about lesson planning. But it’s never a bad idea to have some great Independence Day lesson plans in your back pocket for a rainy day! All of my 4th of July lesson planning came when I was running a preschool summer camp; squeeze some glue on a black piece of construction paper, throw some glitter at it, and BOOM . . . a firework!
Luckily these resources have a bit more history to them for those teachers that like to cover some actual content in their classrooms!
Don’t forget to check back later this fall for a collection of Constitution Day lesson plans and resources!
The 2018 Kansas Social Studies conference is scheduled for October 28 & 29 on the campus of Emporia State University and is co-sponsored by all the K’s:
The conference theme targets the teaching and learning of historical thinking skills and assessments with a special focus on creating civically engaged students. You’ll walk away smarter with new details about civic engagement strategies, tech integration tools, and current best practice.
You don’t want to miss this – make plans now to attend!
When I mention stations in the classroom, does your mind automatically jump to the organized chaos of a Kindergarten classroom? Could I convince you to jump to a social studies classroom instead? Station Rotation is another Blended Learning model that promotes technology integration and differentiation, while enhancing learning in the classroom.
Stations are a great way to provide students with content through a variety of learning activities. Students can be working individually, with partners or small groups, with the teacher, and with or without technology all in the same class at the same time. Sound like organized chaos that could work in your classroom? Continue reading And Rotate! Blended Learning in the Social Studies Classroom
Technology integration, individualized learning, differentiation, data based decision making, standards driven content . . . the list of expectations in any given lesson could go on and on, but how do teachers go about efficiently meeting all of these demands in their classrooms?
Blended Learning is a great solution that many teachers are turning to, and one model frequently used is Learning Contracts. These contracts are agreements between the teacher and their students, which allows students some choice in their learning while requiring students to meet conditions set by the teacher. Contracts outline an entire lesson or unit for students before they begin learning the content, providing them with what they will be learning, how they will learn it, due dates, and assessments.
Continue reading Under Contract: Blended Learning in the Social Studies Classroom
