First draft vs final drafts This is a guest post from Alyssa Park, a fourth-grade teacher at Scarselli Elementary School in Nevada. Nevada map QFT lesson plan Alyssa’s Twitter thread showing student work from this lesson Related resources
The April 5, 2021 #sschat—a moderated Twitter chat using the #sschat hashtag—was chock full of innovative ideas to teach social studies skills from educators across the country. Here is how the group defines itself on the #sschat website. #sschat is more than a hashtag, it’s an open group of dedicated network of educators and enthusiasts…
If your students need help with asking questions when analyzing primary sources, bring out the question cubes. You can make them from paper or cleaned-out school milk cartons. Each student or student group should get two cubes (see image directly above and below) and roll both to help get those questions flowing. You can also…
Questioning & the Common Core State Standards The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Reading emphasize teaching students to become active questioners beginning in kindergarten. RL/RI.K.1. With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. RL/RI.1.1. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text. RL/RI.2.1. Ask and answer such questions…
The Teaching with the Library of Congress blog provides several ideas for inspiring close observation and engaging students with primary sources, including having students make personal connections to an item, look for clues to time period and authorship, look for details that provide evidence of their thinking, and ask purposeful questions. Close observation of images is great practice…