Teaching Social Studies in Longer Blocks of Time

Kirsten 0:00

This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm Kirsten of The Southern Teach, an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies. I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.

Kirsten 0:46

Hello again, and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast. This week, we're going to be talking about some tips and ideas on teaching social studies with longer blocks of time. So if you are a lucky duck who has more than 30 minutes to teach social studies, this could be ranging from 35 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, and even 90 minutes. This episode is for you. I'm going to share with you some ways you can utilize your 45 to 60 minute block, I'll give you a structured schedule with examples, and I'll also share some ideas and examples for a 90 minute social studies block. Now I'm thinking that if you have this amount of time, you're likely just a social studies teacher, like you're just teaching social studies, or you might be social studies and science, where you can dedicate one or two subjects of your entire block for social studies. And you might also be teaching maybe two grade levels rather than just one grade level. In my experience, when I had longer blocks of time, it was because I was just teaching ELA and social studies. And of course, while the majority of my time would be in ELA, I was able to dedicate about 30 to 35 maybe even 45 on a good day, minutes each day of social studies time. So this could relate to you, maybe not, but you are, of course, more than welcome to listen in on these ideas. So if you're lucky enough to have extended time for your social studies block, you are in for a treat. Today, more time means more opportunities to dive deeper into topics, engage students with a variety of activities and make learning for social studies even more dynamic. So I'm going to share with you some structured schedules and creative ideas to help you make most of your time in social studies. Let's start with the 45 to 60 minute block schedule. I'm going to share with you the breakdown of how you can structure it and some topic ideas and examples. So the first part would be warm up, which is five to 10 minutes. The second part is mini lesson, which takes 10 to 15 minutes. The third part, independent activity, 10 to 15 minutes. Fourth part, stations or game, 10 to 15 minutes. And a review or extend, which would be three to five minutes. So let's go back up to the first part the warm up. This is five to 10 minutes. You're starting with a quick, engaging activity to get students thinking about social studies. You could use a daily passage related to the current topic, or you could do some type of brief quiz on what you might have learned in a previous lesson. This sets the stage for the lesson in general, and it helps activate prior knowledge, activating schema. So for example, you might have a daily passage, which could be a short passage about some type of historical event or biography with a couple of comprehension questions from the passage. Or you could do a quick quiz, have a few review questions about the previous day's lesson. You can do it trivia style. Could do like a turn and talk, where you have a question on the board. Students turn and talk, and then you call on someone and they share the answer. It could be super simple, and you could even discuss their answers, either if somebody got it wrong, or if somebody got it right. Mini lesson is 10 to 15 minutes. You're presenting the core content of the day's lesson. You could use a mix of direct instruction multimedia, such as videos or a slideshow and interactive elements to keep students engaged. Maybe they're taking notes along with what you're teaching in the lesson. So an example I have for this one is the American Revolution. You could show a brief video clip, either maybe from Discovery Ed, if you have a subscription or Brain Pop, explaining the causes and key years of the revolution, and then follow that up by a quick discussion. I will say that I truly loved the topics that they had in Discovery Ed. And I'm sure there's even more topics available. And I also know Discovery Ed had Liberty Kids, but I know you can get Liberty kids on YouTube. Liberty Kids is a little longer, more fun, and it's nice like review time, if you want to incorporate that, like on a Friday watching a video about the American Revolution, there's all kinds of episodes about mainly the American Revolution, and it's a kind of fictional show, but they share actual facts. I digress, though. In the mini lesson, you're just really thinking about the core content. And one of the easiest ways to do this is through some type of slideshow or video independent activity. 10 to 15 minutes, have students work individually on a task that reinforces the mini lesson. And I will say just in general, if you want to do independent you can or I always liked to change it up. Maybe I'll say you can work in partners or work in groups. But for the most part, I would either go between like working in pairs or individually. Sometimes I'd give a choice. Students have the choice to work with a partner or individually on some type of task. This wouldn't be all the time. There would be some assignments where I would want everybody to do this independently, but this could be a worksheet, a short project, or even some type of written reflection or activity. The sky is the limit on this, as long as it relates to what they learned in the mini lesson. So an example of this is students can fill out a graphic organizer about the causes of the American Revolution, listing the key events and their impacts. Next up going into social study stations. This could be something that you could do it's 10 to 15 minutes. You're setting up some stations around the room. You could even do it where they're all working on the same station, or you have them rotate. Maybe they only have three to five minutes to complete that task. So I'm thinking like task card style. You don't want it to be a whole thing where they're completing something super intense and they cannot finish it in the 10 to 15 minutes. I would say maybe set up three to four stations task card style, where they're maybe answering a question or identifying locations, or like doing some type of timeline where they're filling in one blank to complete the timeline, something like that sort. So with this, they are rotating through, working on different parts of the topic. And then the last part, review and extend. Wrap up with a brief review of what was covered. You might also extend the learning by previewing what's coming next or assigning a small project like maybe to work on in another block of time later on in the week. So this is about three to five minutes as well. You could recap key points from the mini lesson, answer any remaining questions, or do that extension, maybe preview a lesson on the Articles of Confederation, and maybe have some type of homework task, or a task to think about, like a journal entry about how students think the new government might have impacted their lives - super extended where maybe it could be better for your more advanced students. I always like to tend to, you know, do some type of review and wrap up, but you can easily extend where needed.

Kirsten 8:35

All right, now let's go into the 90 minute block schedule. It is formatted pretty similarly. It just has a lot more time to do things. So it's not as condensed as the 45 minute to 60 minute block could be, but you would be surprised at what you could get done in that time frame. But with the 90 minute block, you've got 10 minutes of warm up. You have a 20 minute mini lesson. You've got 20 minutes for some type of independent activity. You have some type of station rotation for 25 minutes, and then you've got the review and extend for 15 minutes to end the block out. So with the warm up, similar to the 60 minute and 45 minute block, start with some type of warm up that sets the stage for the day's learning. This could be a daily passage, or a more detailed passage, or even some type of brief current events article or CNN 10, that's actually 10 minutes, around 10 minutes to kind of set the tone for the day. And there's also the mini lesson the second part, which is about 20 minutes, use this extra time to dive even deeper into the content. Incorporate more interactive elements or more discussion opportunities to explore the topic. So maybe you have the US Constitution that you're talking about in the mini lesson. You can have a mix of some type of traditional lecture with a presentation, maybe a quick video, recapping about the US Constitution, or introducing the US Constitution, and then a class discussion on how the Constitution impacts our lives today. With the third step, independent activity, which is about 20 minutes, students are working individually or in pairs on a more comprehensive task. This could be maybe a more detailed worksheet, a short assignment for research, where they're going on laptops to research something or some type of creative writing task, like a journal or diary entry. So for example, similarly, with the US Constitution, you can have students write a short essay on how one of the Constitution's amendments could affect students' daily lives. How could the First Amendment, if that was not there? How could it affect our lives today? How could the Seventh Amendment affect lives today. As well the fourth part - stations. With more time, you can extend the stations to include more tasks, or more in depth tasks. So with the first block time, I suggested maybe three to five minutes, three or four stations, you know super quick task card type activities. But with the stations, you could either have them focus really hard on one or two stations and really in depth tasks, not just one quick task card but you can either do that or you could fit in more quick task card activities. Maybe instead of three to four, you can try to do five to six, where students are going through in three to five minutes. But some ideas could be maybe an interactive constitution scavenger hunt where they're searching or mixing matching the description with the name of the amendment. You could also do a debate station where students discuss the impact of different amendments. You know, stations don't always have to be where you're you have to write something down. You could have just students like, their task in that station is to just debate. Or like, have somebody is for a particular amendment and somebody is against a particular amendment. And you are going to, like, maybe have some type of pre formatted format, where they are going through and discussing, you know, the pros and cons, and then they can talk about what they've learned just in a couple of sentences based off of their mock debate or however you want to do that. And then a third example is to design a poster illustrating one of the Constitution's amendments. This could be a quick draw where they have, like, five to 10 minutes to sketch, or you can do it a little bit longer, more in depth. And then lastly, you've got the review and extend your ending with a comprehensive review. Could do a quiz or, like, more in depth discussion, maybe even some type of quick project extension activity that allows students to apply their learning. So you could do a group discussion on what was learned and key takeaways. You could have, maybe even starting a group project where students are creating a mock Constitution Day event, or just a nice, more in depth discussion. Or maybe you have students go around the room and list one takeaway that would take up about 15 minutes as well.

All right. Now, some additional tips for both of these blocks. One idea is just making sure you have interactive games incorporate educational games that align with the lesson, such as Jeopardy style quizzes or interactive digital platforms like Nearpod or Kahoot. Kahoot is a really great fun quiz style game that you could do as part of either stations or review. There's also an using Nearpod for the mini lesson. There's great ideas for teaching a variety of social studies lessons, and it's just more interactive because students are following along with the lesson as you teach it in real time on their own devices. So that could be something that is different and new as well. But you could also use Nearpod for stations as well. And then another tip, current events, make sure you're integrating current events related to social studies topics. Use resources like Kid News, which is a podcast, to connect historical knowledge with what's happening today. Also, CNN 10 is great. I mentioned CNN 10 - you can always do as like a little warm up, especially if maybe the presidential election is coming up, and they happen to be talking about it, and that happens to be the lesson you're talking about today, something related to the election that's always a really great tie in, because it is getting them kind of interested and engaged. And then lastly, hands on activities. Include crafts, role plays, or simulations to make learning more engaging. And memorable hands on activities could really go through from any part, but I would especially recommend it for maybe an independent activity or stations with these structured schedules and ideas for longer blocks of time. You can make the most of your extended Social Studies block and provide a rich and interactive learning experience for your students, I hope you enjoyed this informative episode. I hope it gave you some ideas and things you want to try to implement if you have more than 30 minutes of time to teach social studies.

With that, I will see you again next week. Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.