Tip of the Week: Six sweet social studies activities for back to school

I spent a few days in Texas last week leading some conversation around the ideas of online civic literacy, fake news, and the power of the 1st Amendment and enjoyed every minute. This week? They’re jumping into the deep end of the pool with kids. So for them, this post is a few days too late. You might be in the same pool.

But I’m hoping that for most of you, you’ve got one more weekend before your first contact day.

And to help jumpstart your first awesome week, here are six great ways to kick off the year. Use what you can. Adapt what you can’t.

What not to do

But before we get too far along with what we know works, it’s probably a good idea to think about what doesn’t. 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 have many days 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 day 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?

Kids need to be in groups. They need to be solving problems. They need to get a taste of some social studies 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. Maybe a little tech here and there. Have fun.

Need some specifics? Start with these six:

3 powerful tools to integrate multimedia, VR, & digital timelines to increase literacy

My kids love it whenever they get the chance to use technology as part of the writing process. My job is to make sure that the tech use is meaningful and purposeful – when used correctly technology can help enhance and transform my lessons, provide real-world activities, and increase student engagement.

Jill Weber, Cheney Middle School

We all strive to develop students with the skills necessary to be successful after high school graduation. And national and local standards provide us with documents packed full of suggested benchmarks and commendable expectations.

The Common Core ELA writing standards encourage students to “use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.” The National Council for the Social Studies urges us to find ways for our kids to “take informed action” based on what they have learned.

What teacher doesn’t want that for their students?

We all want our students to write more. To develop solutions to authentic problems. To spread their voices beyond the classroom. But it can be difficult for classroom teachers to have a clear vision of what that might look like in actual practice.

The good news is that there is an abundance of multimedia resources available that support the creation and sharing of student storytelling products.

HSTRY now with real time collaboration

In Kansas, one of our state standards focuses on the idea that choices have consequences. Our document encourages teachers to use strategies that help kids to “identify and defend a variety of possible causes of events, and the resulting consequences, encourages appropriate decision-making and helps students understand the complexity of the various disciplines.”

And one of the tools I urge teachers to use as part of the learning process is the simple timeline. They might seem like super basic things but timelines truly are powerful strategies for helping kids understand cause and effect and context. They’re also great for building the ability to evaluate and analyze choices.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the old fashioned paper and pencil timeline.

But . . . I have been a big fan of the HSTRY timeline tool ever since it came out several years ago.

HSTRY may be one of the best digital learning tools you’ll run across. It is just that cool. Simple description? HSTRY is a web-based service that encourages both teachers and students to create their own interactive timelines that support collaboration and the use of multimedia elements.

Use Timeline JS and Juxtapose for historical thinking awesomeness

Several weeks ago, I gushed about a new tool I had just run across called StoryMap JS. It seemed like an easy to use, nice to look at tool for creating interactive, multimedia historical accounts. Perfect for pushing out teacher created content to students and for pulling in student created content.

And guess what?

That’s right. KnightLabs at Northwestern University, the makers of StoryMap, have some other tools as well. They’ve created something called

Hstry: Free 21st century timelines that are awesome

December was a busy month. I had stuff going on. You know . . . college basketball season had kicked in, those pesky Christmas lights, the Star Wars VII trailer was out. Normal December stuff.

So I missed it. Back on December 4, I missed a post by Richard Bryne over at Free Technology for Teachers highlighting a very cool new timeline tool that I think you need to try out. If you’ve already read Richard’s post, feel free to just re-watch the trailer. Or you could make yourself useful – use the new tool to create a timeline and share it in the comments.

But if you’re like me and didn’t get the chance to browse through the December 4 post, hang around a bit. I’ve had the chance to hear from others who’ve used it and tried it myself – and I’m convinced you need to check it out.

Hstry is a

Tip of the Week: Timeline Game

By now, most of you have settled into a regular routine and are deep into your content. Materials have been passed out, seats have been assigned. You and your kids are busy gathering information and solving problems.

It’s the perfect time for a quick activity to assess prior knowledge before starting a unit or to measure their learning afterwards.

The Timeline game is a bit like a card sort activity. You’re asking kids to organize information into patterns that help them make sense of data. With a card sort activity, you typically use people, places, or vocabulary. A timeline activity will use events.

A basic outline of the strategy: