Six Awesome Back to School Social Studies Ideas

I was on a quick Zoom call the other night when of the high school teachers casually mentioned that his first day back with students had gone pretty well. Seriously!? Cue the jaw drop. I’m always a little bit shocked when I hear about districts that crank up during the first few days of August but I never get used to it.

Maybe you’re in that same boat, shoving off with kids already or very soon. If you are, this post may be a little too late. But I’m hoping that for most of you, you’ve got at least one or two more weekends before your first few student contact days.

To help energize your first awesome week with kids, here are some great ways to kick off the school year. Use what you can. Adapt what you can’t. Ignore the rest.

What not to do

Before we get too far along with what we know works, it’s probably a good idea to think about what doesn’t. 

First thing, don’t let Harry Wong lead you too far astray. After reading The First Days of School and having it drilled into my head that his methods were the be all, end all of classroom management I made myself into a clone. My first couple years I spent a ton of time the first few days practicing routines, reviewing procedures, and explaining rules.

In other words, I spent the first few days in my classroom doing a lot of stuff that I hated when I was a student.

I’ve mentioned Fourteen Things You Should Never Do on the First Day of School before but it’s still a great reminder of what it looks like when we’re doing it wrong. Mark Barnes suggest that your goal should be a very simple one during the first few days of school:

You’ll have tons of time to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses. You have months to discuss high stakes testing and standards. You’ll spend weeks probing the textbook.

The first few days of school should be dedicated to rapport-building and to joy.

Your goal should be that students go home that night and tell their parents: “I’m going to love history class because my teacher is awesome!”

So what should we be doing the first week?

You can’t go wrong with these two basic rules:

• Talk less
• Do more

Beyond that, work on getting to know your students. Kids need to be in groups. They need to be solving problems. They need to get a taste of some social studies stuff and play with some social studies tools. They need to know that it’s okay to fail. They should practice a few critical thinking skills. And a little tech here and there never hurts.

Some things that work:

Names

Learning one names and their correct pronunciation is huge the first days of the school year and should be on the top of your list. Introducing themselves to a new group can cause anxiety for many students, and the way in which their names are received by their peers and teacher is a big first step in developing a supportive classroom culture. Facing History and Ourselves have some handy activities that provide an opportunity for collaboration and community building.

Jump off with one that can help your kids think about what parts of our identities we choose for ourselves and what parts are chosen for us, as well as the impact our names can have on our identities. And I’m a huge fan of Jason Reynolds, 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature at the Library of Congress. In this activity, Jason models how to share stories behind special objects and personal items that represent important parts of his identity and family story. Adapt the practice for your own kids to start building a powerful learning environment.

History Mysteries

Your class should be all about using evidence to solve problems and make claims. So start your kids off by encouraging this idea with a variety of mysteries and problems to mess with.

One of my faves has always been something I call a Visual Discrepant Inquiry. I got the idea from the amazing Michael Yell and adapted it to encourage historical thinking with visuals.

The basic idea of a Discrepant Event Inquiry is to present your kids with a puzzling, paradoxical, or discrepant event or story. The idea is that the answer that your kids think is so obvious is not the answer at all. Students ask questions, pose hypotheses, analyze and synthesize information, and draw tentative conclusions while attempting to find an answer to the inquiry. The cool thing is that you can use a textual or visual version of the strategy. (Get and overview of how Michael Yell, middle school teacher, past president of NCSS, and author of A Link to the Past: Engaging Students in the Study of History, uses DEI with text.)

The process is pretty simple. Uncover parts of an image one at a time, like a jigsaw. Ask kids in groups to solve three questions related to the image:

• when was the photograph taken
• where was it taken
• what is happening.

You uncover one piece at a time, asking groups to solve the problems using evidence.

Get the basic step by step instructions here and adapt it to fit your grade level and content. Don’t be afraid to use maps, political cartoons, paintings . . . basically anything that when completely uncovered reveals something completely unexpected. (And at the start of the year, your first Visual DEI doesn’t need to be something directly related to your content.)

I also love the idea of using artifacts from the Library of Congress to generate curiosity and what I call “academic discomfort.”

Stephanie’s History House has anothe simple but powerful mystery type of activity that she calls True False Fix that would also be a sweet activity to roll out the first week.

Sidewalk Chalk

Who doesn’t like to color with sidewalk chalk? It’s okay to head outside any time of the year but it’s especially okay during the first week of school. Grab some on sale sidewalk chalk or ask one of your elementary teacher buddies if they have any to share. Find a parking lot, sidewalk, commons area, anywhere you can draw.

So . . . you’ve got chalk. You’ve got a canvas. Now what?

Try some of these ideas:

• Start with something less social studiesy. Reinforce some of the stuff you did with their names but asking them to design and draw a logo based on who they are.
• Put kids in groups. Have each group create a poll question. Have kids rotate through the different questions and vote.
• Put kids in groups. Give them a list of stuff you’ll be studying over the next semester. Have them create a timeline that correctly arranges that content. Award prizes for most accurate and most artistic.
• Using the same list of stuff, ask groups to create a series of TikTok and Instagram hashtags that best describe the content. Encourage a little cell phone research to help.
• Provide a very basic overview of your first unit. Let them do a quick five minutes of research. Ask kids to create a six-word novel that summarizes their research. Have groups rotate through the novels and vote for their favorite.

This or That

This is as great bell ringer, exit ticket, or quick formative assessment that you’ll want to use throughout the year. So use thit during the first week to get students used to the process and, well . . . it’s a good time! Pose a forced choice or a “yes” or “no” question and designate each side of the room as the answers. Students walk to the side of the room to express their answer. Once there, challenge students to collaborate and share out the strongest reason for their answer, ask a question of the other side, offer a rebuttal, etc. 

Later in the the school year, your questions can be as specific as asking about a certain primary source: “Do you agree or disagree with the editorial’s argument?” Or questions specific to your unit: “Was Reconstruction a failure or a success” 

But the first week, start with stuff that’s easy:

• Pancakes. Good or bad? (Good)
• Pizza with black olives. Good or bad? (Bad)
• Favorite NFL team. Denver Broncos or Kansas City Chiefs? (Chiefs )
• Vladamir Putin. Evil tyrant or just evil? (Evil tyrant)

Feel free to work your way up the cognitive ladder by asking kids to think about more serious stuff. It’s a good way to introduce upcoming content.

Do some GBL with Goose Chase & GimKit

We know how powerful the concept of play can be in the learning process. We also know how packed with data and information the first week back always is. So why not play some games to break up some of that info overload?

Try the free Goose Chase app. It’s basically a hybrid digital / reality based scavenger hunt that kids play on their phones. Each GooseChase game that you develop has a list of “missions” for participants to complete. So you might ask groups of kids to find a clue somewhere in the room or outside or down the hall and take a picture of it. Or find an online website. Or video their group acting out a short skit. Just about anything is possible. You can create your mission list using their bank of 100+ tested missions or by designing your own from scratch. Text & GPS missions are also possible.

I absolutely love GimKit. It’s basically a trivia game but it’s so much more than just another form of Kahoot. You get lots of ways to deploy it in your room and there’s a super easy to use free version or an option to upgrade for more goodies. Watch this quick tutorial and grab some tips and tricks.

And once you have a free account you can steal, borrow, and adapt the GimKits games and questions of 1000s of other teachers to create your own. Trust me. GimKit should be in every teacher’s tool belt.

Geo Goodness

I love Google Earth and all of the things you can create using it. But sometimes you just want GE to do all of the work. So if you’re working middle school kids or the littles, explore some of the different games under the Voyager tab in GE. Who doesn’t love Carmen Sandiego?

Or check out the classic version of the online Geoguessr. The game drops you into a Google StreetView and you have to use contextual clues to figure out where you are. (They’re always changing how the free and paid versions work, so poke around to get the latest options.) Or explore the GeoGuessr knockoff called City Guesser. Same idea but free with more options and games. Be sure to check out Worldle, Hide and Seek World, and Zoomtastic. All are fun educational geo games. Making them perfect for the first week of school.

No matter when you start back, using some of these ideas are guaranteed to help jump start your first week!

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Glenn is a curriculum and tech integration specialist, speaker, and blogger with a passion for technology and social studies. He delivers engaging professional learning across the country with a focus on consulting, presentations, and keynotes. Find out more about Glenn and how you might learn together by going to his Speaking and Consulting page.