Some had mentioned they would like to see inside my social studies interactive notebook so I finally remembered to bring it home and snap some pictures. It is not as creative as my language arts one! I used some foldables from
Dinah Zike, some I found online, and some great units from
InspirEd Educators.
This is my first year teaching social studies (in middle school, in my career, and in 6th grade). I teach in NC and our state will be implementing the Common Core starting next school (2012-2013). In addition, all of our other curriculums have changed to what they call Essential Standards. I was put on the Social Studies Essential Standards training team for our county.
Needless to say, I was panicked and lost at the beginning of the school year. I started out with the five themes of geography and landforms and then moved to South America which was found in our old textbook while we read
The Cay in language arts class. Since being put on the training team, the team was told after the first nine weeks that we were
allowed encouraged to convert to the new essential standards curriculum. With that came a complete loss for me. I had no social studies materials to start with, but the change meant I had absolutely nothing, not even the old textbook. I headed to the Internet to search for materials, lessons, actually anything I could get my hands on and discovered InspirED Educators.
InspirEd Educators was like this amazing find for me (and in no way am I affiliated or paid to promote their products)! They have several thematic units on ancient world history which is what our new essential standards is for 6th grade. These lessons contain a variety of hands on activities, primary and secondary sources, whole group/small group lessons, research projects, and collaborative projects just to name a few.
So...long story short: my social studies notebooks started out more interactive but then became a place to glue all the lesson from InspirEd Educators as act as a textbook for social studies. Here are a few pictures to get started.
 |
| The table of contents for my social studies interactive notebook. |
 |
| Five Themes of Geography flip book foldable. We took notes on each tab for that theme. Notice the capital/bold letters spell MR. HELP...this was our acronym to help remember the five themes (found on the Internet somewhere). |
 |
| One of the tabs from our Five Themes of Geography flip book foldable. |
 |
| Longitude and latitude foldable using a paper plate and then glued into our notebooks. |
 |
| Here is the paper plate foldable unfolded in our notebook. |
I love your interactive notebooks! I just started experimenting this year with them and the kids love them. Thanks for the great ideas.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered this blog today through Pinterest and I'm already bookmarking a ton of great ideas through your links, as well as this blog! It's so rare to find middle/high school teacher resources, and your ideas are so great! Esp. considering you're teaching language arts AND social studies... oh man, this site is making me SO excited for improving my lessons! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYour creativity is refreshing. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog posts and cannot wait to see more. Making middle school fun and engaging is a real challenge. Thanks for your posts and ideas!
ReplyDeleteI love your blog! It seems that we have the same teaching style. With that said I have a question for you about the InspirEd Educators products that you used.
ReplyDeleteI am a 6th grade teacher who will be teaching geography of the Western Hemisphere this fall. We are moving from state standards to Common Core for 2012-2013. Our current 6th grade book examines the Civil War Era, not geography. We are not eligible to adopt new books until the 2013-2014 school year. Therefore, I am looking for a program to take the place of a textbook for at least one year. I am a very hands-on teacher and love projects and assignments that require my students to apply what they have learned.
I noticed that you used the Thematic Units. Would these be enough to create a curriculum or would I need to purchase the binders also?
Thank you!
I only purchased 3 thematic units for this past school year. One on geography, one on Ancient Civilizations, and one on Ancient Egypt. Had I remained in 6th grade teaching language arts and social studies, I would have purchased the other units and used only them and supplemented with other activities and/or PowerPoints. I like the InspirEd Educators activities because they were a mix of hands-on, independent student reading, small group activities, and research done either independently, in pairs, or in small groups.
DeleteI have not looked into the binders, so I'm not sure how much "stuff" is in them. I really liked the units, they werew a lifesaver for me as we are switching to our state's essential standards to complement the Common Core and the text I had was on South Americe and Europe.
Please let me know if this doesn't answer your questions. Send me your email address and I'll share a sample lesson I found with you for you to check out the InspirEd Educators stuff.
Randy
I use composition books as a postgrad in a super similar way (came across your post randomly from Pinterest). I feel numbering the pages and creating the 'table of contents' is an important process in learning as it 'forces' you to keep every page in the notebook and to stop being 'precious' with everything - it's your work/resource/journal/whatever, who cares if there are mistakes?
ReplyDeleteJust came across your blog on pinterest and love it! I've already saved you to the home screen on my iPhone. :-)
ReplyDeleteI just thought if add that I think the InspirEd materials are amazing!! I used the government and economics units at a previous school and it was some of the best teaching I've ever done!!
Hey
ReplyDeleteI was wanting to know the name of the foldables book that you had put up here. The picture was not very clear.
Thanks
Sorry about the blurry picture...I "borrowed" it from the Dinah Zike website. Like I said in my post, I let a co-worker borrow my copy and it has yet to be returned - when it is, I will post a much better picture.
DeleteI wil try to create a link to the actual book so you can just click from here...but that could be above and beyond my techie abilities.
Try clicking here: Dinah Zike's Notebooking Central Notebook Foldables Physical Geography and Map Skills
Hope this helps!
Randy
Is the paper plate project for longitude and latitude in the book as well? I'm new to fourth grade and need more instructions on that particular one. Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteMisty
That is actually something I found online by accident. You can probably do a search for it and it will pop up. I found it, printed it, and didn't book mark it or anything.
DeleteSorry!
Randy