A few years ago, Naomi O’Brien and I realized our students were getting the same “social studies” lessons year after year, grade after grade. Think… Johnny Appleseed, President’s Day, MLK Jr. Day… rinse and repeat. These lessons were not teaching our students real-world concepts, showing inclusive views of different cultures, or providing authentic stories for our primary students. So… we came up with our own Social Studies curriculum! We decided to focus on 5 main areas to center our lessons around. They are civics, history, economics, geography, and sociology. These strands of Social Studies will help to widen student perspectives, promote higher-level thinking skills, and help create a classroom culture of discussion and sharing!
Well, so glad you asked friend! Naomi and I have you covered. We have created a FREE introduction unit that is low prep but high impact to introduce meaningful Social Studies lessons and discussions into your primary classroom. It all starts with an e-book! Just project our book for a fun and engaging read-aloud and introduction to our 5 focus areas. You can even print it and put it in your class library for easy reference for you or for students to re-read as many times as they want! This book will help you define and discuss civics, history, economics, geography, and sociology in a language made for our little learners to understand. Click here to get the free e-book!
The next step to building a solid Social Studies foundation is teaching your students our chants! We have short chants for each of the 5 focus areas that our students LOVE! We even hear them saying them at recess, snack time, and at home teaching their parents all about what they learned! These chants help anchor the vocabulary for students to be able to easily recall before we discuss a new lesson. We have included these colorful posters with the words to the chant for you to display on a board or laminate and put in a folder for students to reference. They would be great on anchor charts as well! To hear the chants and get the posters, sign up here! It will be delivered to you instantly.
Get these FREE Social Studies 5 posters and chants HERE
To help cement all this new knowledge, we have created a low prep craft and writing activity! After reading the book and teaching the chant, students have the opportunity to write or draw their own definitions of each of the Social Studies 5. These fun backpacks and school tools would be a great bulletin board to show what students are learning, a fun open house example to have out, or great to send home so students can teach parents all about civics, history, economics, geography, and sociology! Get the craft here!
Get this FREE writing activity and craft HERE
We hope this free Social Studies 5 introductory unit will help you introduce your students to our wide world in a no-stress, engaging way. To keep the learning going all year, be sure to join our Social Studies Club at www.tabbandobrien.com for access to all of our Social Studies units, pop in PD videos and so much more, all in one place! Or you can pick and chose what fits your room best from our units on teacherspayteachers.com and my website. We even wrote an entire book about why Social Studies is important and how to provide students with a deep but achievable understanding of global social systems that you can purchase here and grab the free study guide to go with it here.
Wife, Mama of 2, and apron wearing primary educator from Indianapolis.
©2019 LaNesha Tabb | All Rights Reserved | Designed by Ashley Hughes
One Response
I have been teaching these chants to my 5th graders (10/17 ELL, 5/17 SPED) and they are already, just 7 days into school, making sense of the different parts of S.S. and making connections to the SS 5 throughout the day. To hear a beginning English speaker raise his hand to try out the chant on his own then say “sociology” – oo, I’m so thankful for this resource!!