This will be my first year teaching SS-I've been an English/Language Arts teacher for years. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Get a copy of your standards and any teachers guides/resources that are used in your dstrict...map out a rough outline of your year... Good luck and congrats on your new job!:thumb:
Find your learning outcomes and then start organizing your units. You'll find you can integrate a lot of ELA into social studies!
I have the standards, materials, etc. . just wanted suggestions of how you make 6th grade SS interesting and how you teach it using the text.
What's your basic curriculum? I'm new to SS also but have experience in other content areas. We do a unit on economics and then study world geography.
What are the topics you are going to be covering? Social Studies is pretty broad, so you will probably get more advice if we have some specifics.
I'm teaching 6th/7th grade World History too, thats mostly early civilizations. I used to teach 4th grade, mostly LAL, so we are kinda in the same boat We should exchange emails and help each other out and share resources as the year goes on? What state are you teaching in?
6th grade Social Studies is so much fun! I taught 6th grade "Core" last year (LA/SS Core). We focused primarily on Ancient Civilizations and did a lot of research projects and art projects that correlated with the units.
I would plan some time to teach note taking with the students. They need this skill for the rest of their lives! I would also teach the basics of research and writing a research paper. So important for every year from here on out! I know that those aren't much fun, but they are important. I would definitely look into RAFT (if you aren't already familiar). It works get for SS. Foldables are great too! Especially for organizing materials from the text or other sources. In our first chapter, we talked about Mesopotamia. My students enjoyed choosing a place to build a settlement and then defending why their choice was the best option. They also really enjoyed learning about cavemen/and the iceman. Egypt was great! They loved a little mythology (we really hit this with Greece/Rome). They really enjoyed the pyramids (you could even have them build their own). One year we mummified a chicken (kind of gross, but they students loved it!). They loved making Egyptian masks. We use the pyramid foldable during this unit as well. If you haven't fallen in love with Rick Riordan, check him out! He has a great few series on different mythology. He has The Kane Chronicles on Egypt, Percy Jackson on Greece, and one that he is still working on that mixes Greek and Roman gods. The students love them!
