Search results matching tags 'social studies' and 'review activities and games'

Volcano Unit Proofreader Needed!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:30:00 GMT

Hey blog friends! I need two people to proofread and check over my 85 page Voyage to the Volcano Unit. I have already looked over it, but it's always good to get a second set of eyes!

I need them to be checked out within the next hour or so! The first two people to comment with their emails will be my proofreaders! You will keep the unit I email you as a token of my appreciation for helping me out!

Sorry the first ones blurry!

I hope to have this posted in both my shops this evening!

Happy Mothers day to all those wonderful mamas out there!

South Carolina Region Cookies

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:14:00 GMT

I know it has been several days since my last post, but I have just been swamped at school after being at a wedding this past weekend in Charleston (which was beautiful, btw!)

To end our South Carolina geography unit, we decorated South Carolina shaped cookies that correlated to the different regions of our state. We have done this activity for the last two years and the kids absolutely love it! It is so much fun! I am providing the flipchart we used to guide the activity and also pictures of us in action!

Click the image for the flipchart.

Here are some photos from the activity!

This is just the blank SC cookie before they decorated it.

Here is the finished product!

Other fun pics!

We displayed the flipchart in the cafeteria and reviewed the regions. As we went through, we discussed which candy item would best represent that region.

Regions and candies:

Blue Ridge - Chocolate chips to represent mountains

Piedmont - fruit roll ups to represent red clay soil

Sandhills - Yellow sprinkles to represent sandy soil

Inner Coastal Plain - brown sprinkles to represent the good soil

Outer Coastal Plain - White sprinkles to represent how rice is grown here

Coastal Zone - Swedish fish (I don't think an explanation is needed! haha)

This activity could be adapted for many different things! So even if you don't live or teach about South Carolina, you can still take this idea and run with it. I have seen it done to review the transcontinental railroad and I have also used it for reviewing the parts of plant and animal cells.

If you have any questions about this, please e-mail me at glauren4556@gmail.com and I would be happy to help!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:21:00 GMT

We have been learning so much this last month that I just wanted to share a few things from our classroom's neck of the woods.

We just recently finished up a unit on South Carolina Geography and Regions. One of the activities we did was a circle graphic organizer to help us learn about types of communities. This picture is from the first slide of the flipchart I made.

Click the image to download the flipchart. (I've never linked to a flipchart file before so I don't know if this will work. If you don't have Activ Inspire Promethean or SMARTboard software on your computer, it will not open.) I realize that not everyone learns about South Carolina, but you can just change it to suit your own needs.

Here are some pictures of the kids completed circle graphics.

(I just love Francisco's corn! HA!)

I am also giving you the circle graphic organizer to download! Just click the image below for access to the file.

In writing, we have been doing descriptive writing. I was visiting Abby's blog, the Inspired Apple some time ago and came across her Pop Rockin' Descriptive Writing mini unit and I thought it would be a fun thing to do in honor of Halloween. I purchased the unit, which you can buy, here.

Here are some pictures of what we have done so far! First, we talked about what adjectives were and I gave students the pop rocks and adjectives sheet. They tasted the pop rocks and wrote down adjectives to describe the experience.

This is definitely my favorite picture. Just imagine you him laughing hysterically...This little guy was hilarious!

Can you guess what flavor she had?? =)

Clearly these little cuties have never had pop rocks before! I just love their faces!

Then we made this class chart to close the lesson.

The next day, we learned what a simile was and we made this anchor chart.

The students then went back to their seats and completed this simile sheet.

If you like the materials, please visit Abby's TPT store and snag your copy! Your kids will love it and YOU!

In Math, we have been doing subtraction with regrouping. Today, we played this spinner game. I had my students work with a partner, but this would also be a good individual activity. Just have the student use a paper clip and pencil to use the spinner. First, they spin a top number, then a bottom number and just subtract or add.

Here is the copy of the spinner. Just click the image to download.

Needless to say, we have been having tons of fun learning these last few weeks!

More to come soon!

Social Studies: On the Cutting Edge Part II

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:10:00 GMT

Here are a few more activities I learned to make Social Studies more exciting, relevant, and meaningful for your students.

1) Bringing Art to Life - This activity should be done towards the end or after studying a unit/topic. Show students a painting of a person, a battle, an important event, anything really that is relevant to your Social Studies unit/topic. It could even be a photograph. Have students study the photo. Discuss the people in the piece of art. What might they be thinking, where are they, what are they doing, etc... Assign students a character in the photo. Have them mimic the character in the photo by talking and acting like the person in the picture. You can even interview them with a list of premade questions so students can rehearse! You can adapt this by having students write a memoir/letter/paragraph pretending they are the person in the photo.

2) Time Line Challenge - This activity can be used as a unit activiting or culminating strategy. Print 10-12 photos from a time period you are studying. Mix up the photographs and distribute them to random students in the classroom. Have those students with photos come to the front of the room holding their pictures for the class to see. Ask the rest of the class to work with the students standing up to put themselves in the order they think they go in time. This will work best AFTER studying a unit, but it may be worth trying at the beginning of unit to see what students can recall from the previous unit and what knowledge they may already have of the unit you are introducing. If you use it as a unit activator, it will introduce students to the content and they may even remember a thing or two.

3) Zoom - In Inquiry - Take a picture from a previous or current unit you are studying and use paint to copy and paste one small, but important section of the photo to display to the class in a powerpoint. In the next slide, show a little more of the photo. By the third or fourth slide, the whole photo should be revealed. The object of the activity is for the students to guess who or what is being shown in the photo before seeing the whole picture.

4) Interactive Read-Aloud - This can be done with a variety of different books, but "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World," by Marjorie Priceman is a great one to use to teach about geography and locating coutries on a map. While you read the story, have students locate each place on a map and place a sticker on it. This is a great beginning of the year activity to review continents and countries.