Teaching social studies is always a delight for me, but sometimes I need to shake up my classroom activities a bit to keep students excited and interested in the subject matter while also integrating reading and writing practice.

From personal experience, I can tell you that few things excite students more than being turned loose with a pack of sticky notes…

I find that students do some of their best analysis when they use sticky notes. Maybe there’s something in the glue?

The Sticky Note Challenge will help you connect social studies, reading, and writing in a fun, meaningful way.

Before diving into the specifics, be sure to grab my free full-color Sticky Note Challenge chart to display in your classroom or for students to keep in their social studies folders.

The beauty of sticky notes is that they can go nearly anywhere, including classroom doors, interactive notebooks, folders, textbooks, chapter books, large chart paper, and more!

🖊️ I do recommend that you allow students to use black ink pens on their sticky notes because ink shows up better than pencil on sticky notes.

➡️ You can certainly use small sticky notes, but I recommend 3 inch x 3 inch sticky notes.

Are your students ready for the Social Studies Sticky Note Challenge?

Let’s talk about the meaning of each sticky note color…

Pink Sticky Notes: I want to learn more about this person, event, or idea!

Students should use pink sticky notes to make note of individuals, events, and ideas they would like to investigate further.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 A student is reading about the Battle of Bunker Hill and comes across an interesting tidbit about Major General (Dr.) Joseph Warren. He wants to investigate Warren further, so he jots a quick reminder on a pink sticky note.

🤩 When a student reads a historical fiction book involving a Quaker child, the student might want to learn more about the Quaker way of life. This would be great message to write on a pink sticky note for research at a later time.

🤩 A student reading a text about the Great Depression will find out that eggs cost about 18 cents per dozen and a student could attend Harvard for $420 per year. It might be a good idea for the student to write down these facts and a reminder to look more into the prices of items and individuals’ buying power during the Great Depression.

Orange Sticky Notes: Important Vocabulary Words or Individuals

Students should use orange sticky notes to make note of important vocabulary words or individuals.

As the teacher, you’ll need to decide if you want students to make sticky notes for predetermined vocab words and individuals OR if you want more of a “free choice,” in which students themselves decide which words and individuals are most important to put on their sticky notes.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 A student is reading a chapter book and comes across the word splendiferous. She has never seen that word before and she wants to remember it for later when she writes her reading response paragraph. So, she looks up the definition in a dictionary and makes an orange sticky note for the word.

🤩 When reading about the American Revolution, a student will learn about the contributions of the Marquis de Lafayette. The student will want to mark where he appears in the text and write his main role on an orange sticky note.

🤩 While reading in her textbook about Union leaders during the Civil War, a student is confused about the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. It would be good use of an orange sticky note to write a question and save it for later discussion.

Purple Sticky Notes: Main Idea or Main Point of the Text

Students should use purple sticky notes to write down the main idea or main point of the text.

Deciding on the main idea or main point of the text and writing it on a sticky note helps students to keep focus on the main idea as they read.

Writing down the main idea or main point of a text is excellent practice for ELA as well.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 If a student is reading a primary source text about Jamestown’s Starving Time, it might be helpful for her to write the main point of the text on a purple sticky note and add 2-3 sub points on the sticky note to help her maintain focus on what is most important.

🤩 A student is reading an informational text about the Boston Tea Party. After her first cold read through, she jots down the main idea of the text on a purple sticky note using this sentence starter: The Boston Tea Party was a protest carried out by the Sons of Liberty to protest the Tea Act.

Blue Sticky Notes: Text-to-Text Connections

Students should use blue sticky notes to jot down connections from the text they are reading to another text that they have read.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 A student is reading about the early settlement created at Plymouth Plantation. This settlement reminds them of a few details they learned about the early Jamestown settlement. The student uses a blue sticky note to write down the similarities they noticed between the text they are reading and the text about Jamestown that they read previously.

🤩 While reading a fictional account of a boy who witnessed the Boston Massacre, a student may connect the text with a previously read chapter book in which a child witnessed a crime. This would be a good text-to-text connection to write on a blue sticky note.

🤩 While studying economics concepts, a students might make a connection between supply and demand in their textbook with the Tea Act they learned about in their American Revolution book. This is a connection that would look great on a blue sticky note!

Yellow Sticky Notes: Text-to-Self Connections

Students should use yellow sticky notes to jot down connections from the text they are reading to things they’ve experienced in their own lives.

Helping students start to connect text to their own lives is a highly valuable ELA skill and just a life skill in general.

If students can “see” themselves in texts and books, their reading experience becomes much deeper and more meaningful.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 A student reading about the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence will learn about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He might add a yellow connection sticky note to share that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is printed on the wall at his mom’s workplace.

🤩 A student reading a historical fiction chapter book about the Underground Railroad might be drawn into thought about what she would do if she were in the book character’s position. She should write her thoughts on a yellow sticky note.

🤩 If a student reads a text about a historical person worried about a lost item, the student might connect this text to the time her mom was panicked because she lost her keys at the amusement park. This connection would be written on a yellow sticky note.

Green Sticky Notes: Text-to-World Connections

Students should use green sticky notes to write connections that they make from the text to the world.

Classroom Examples:

🤩 When a student reads a chapter book in which a family is driving and a police officer pulls over their car, the student might connect that part of the book to when they’ve seen a car being pulled over and what they know about the 4th Amendment right to privacy.

🤩 When reading about the Columbian Exchange, a student will notice familiar spices and foods mentioned in the text. It would be an excellent use of a green sticky note to jot down the connections that can be made between foods made possible through the Columbian Exchange and foods that the student enjoys.

🤩 A student reading a historical fiction chapter book about a family living on a farm in the 1700s might be able to connect what they are reading with what they learned during the dairy field trip last year.

Before you leave, be sure to grab my free, full-color Sticky Note Challenge chart to display in your classroom or for students to keep in their social studies folders.

If you’d like to keep this post for later, simply save this image to your teacher Pinterest board!

Click here to check out my suggested products to use during this Social Studies Sticky Note Challenge.

*** Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer: Please note that I do earn small commissions, at no cost to you, when a teacher buys on Amazon using my suggestion link. ***

Want more? I’d love to share my best five tips for making social studies your students’ favorite class of the day:

The post Sticky Note Challenge for Social Studies appeared first on Thrive in Grade Five.

Of course, having such limited time to teach social studies is not ideal, but sometimes, this is a teacher’s reality.

Social studies is a critical subject that should be given at least an entire class period daily.

We all know that social studies instruction provides the essential background knowledge and nonfiction literacy skills that create excellent readers.

However, the reality is that teachers must often cram social studies into super limited slots of time.

Let’s run through some ideas for quick social studies instruction, but first, make sure you are part of my free VIP email club where I share ideas, freebies, tips, and fun for upper elementary social studies and writing teachers.

Focus on Basics

There are sooo many fun activities to integrate into social studies class, but if your time is extremely limited, you should focus on getting the basics taught.

Think: What is the main idea of this unit, and how can I get students there quickly?

Example: Let’s say you are teaching about Jamestown Settlement.

1. You want students to understand that this was the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
2. Students need to understand that settlers struggled to survive and ultimately suffered a horrendous period of starvation.
3. You need students to know that Jamestown eventually became a successful venture due to the introduction of tobacco as a cash crop.

Implement: How can you help students to understand these concepts in a very limited amount of time?

For this unit, you might consider using an already prepared Google Slides presentation to introduce and teach the concepts. Then, choose a few printable activities you believe would be most beneficial to your students.

These social studies units include ready-to-use Google Slides presentations to help you introduce each lesson quickly, confidently, and visually.

Integrate Social Studies into Other Subjects

My favorite integration includes teaching social studies and writing together.

Sure, sometimes my students write on fiction or choice topics, but we do a lot of writing about social studies topics, events, important individuals, and ideas.

Asking students to write about what they are learning in social studies is super beneficial because they have time to process the nonfiction information they are learning WHILE refining their writing skills. #teacherbigbrain

For example, I teach five paragraph essay structure, and throughout the process, we complete writing assignments using the social studies topics we are studying.

Example of a Simple Paragraph Prompt: Write one paragraph to describe the economy of the Middle Colonies.

Example of a Five Paragraph Essay Prompt: Artisans, like blacksmiths and wigmakers, made goods by hand. If you could spend the day working with an artisan, which specialty would you choose? Describe three reasons for choosing this specialty.

Formal writing, like the prompts above, is valuable and helps students quickly reach their writing benchmarks.

But remember, you should also ask students to write informally, such as through journal prompts or free writing.

Our goal is to keep those brilliant little minds consistently engaged in social studies. ⭐️ 🌎 🌟

Provide Quick, Engaging Reviews

You may not have time for a full class period review, but you can spend 5 minutes, right?!?

If you have just a few minutes to review important content or topics, you can use quick activities, like these:

• Ask students to work with a partner to connect vocabulary words that are related in some way. Proficiency in vocabulary is critical for background knowledge and understanding of the content.

• Ask students to use sticky notes to write a sentence that describes their biggest takeaway from the lesson. Leave the sticky notes up for a few days to allow students to read what others students wrote.

• Encourage students to make a Top 5 List of the most important things they learned during the lesson.

More Quick Review Ideas & Ready-to-Use 5 Minute Activities 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

Tell History Stories

You may not be able to do a full lesson on the Boston Tea Party, but you CAN use your storytelling power to share event basics with students, like:

• Who was involved?
• Why did this event happen?
• What happened during this event?
• What was the outcome of the event?

Using stories with your students helps them grasp the gist of the lesson in the few minutes you have to teach social studies.

Storytelling will captivate and engage your students like nothing else, promise!

I hope my advice on how to teach social studies in 30 minutes or less was super helpful to you. Before you go, make sure we are connected! Join my Thrive in Grade Five email club for freebies, ideas, and lesson tips for social studies and writing teachers.

The post How to Teach Social Studies in 30 Minutes or Less appeared first on Thrive in Grade Five.

Look no further… It’s all here for you!

What does an engaging social studies lesson look like?

Where can you find ideas for planning your social studies content?

In this blog post, I will share these answers and a free printable checklist/example with you!

Planning Social Studies Lessons

When I was a new teacher, I wanted to add some fun elements to my lessons but it was waaaay too time-consuming to research and find special activities to make my social studies lessons shine.

I created a check list to give teachers a “one stop shop” for spicing up their social studies lessons.

The checklist is great on its own for giving teachers ideas but I also added an example with links to show how I would include each element on the checklist in a social studies lesson.

If you’d like to see how I sequence and pace my entire year in 5th grade social studies, click here to see a comprehensive post.

Using the Social Studies Lesson Checklist & Example

Keep in mind, when you open the Social Studies Lesson Checklist & Example, you’ll see a lot of information in the example section.

I would never include all of these elements in one lesson or even in one unit. This would be too overwhelming for us and for students!

You must pick and choose to find what pieces work best with your students.

Using the topic of American Revolution spies, I listed an example for each part of the checklist.

In conclusion, I’ll leave you to it….

Grab the checklist/example freebie and begin the fun journey of planning amazing social studies lessons!

Ready to download the checklist/example and get started?

It’s easy! Just enter your first name and email address below. As a bonus, you’ll become part of my weekly VIP email club full of tips, ideas, and resources for upper elementary teachers. No spam – just great stuff!

Looking for more guidance? There’s a course for that! Click here to learn more!

Want to keep this blog post for later? Simply save this image to your teacher Pinterest board!

The post How to Plan Social Studies Lessons appeared first on Thrive in Grade Five.