Celebrate Freedom Week

Trying Something New

The past three years that I've taught Social Studies, I've tried to organize our work into folders because there are so many handouts like maps and primary sources involved. However, every year, it has taken more time to insert work into folders in the right order than I thought was worth the time.

So this year, after a lot of Pinterest browsing, I've decided to experiment with making a Social Studies Notebook out of a composition book.

The first week of school we set up our "notebooks" and started Celebrate Freedom Week. I'd like to have covered the front with something more US History themed, but there just wasn't time, and after all, this format is an experiment!

Then we added a table of contents. 

We used sticky notes to mark each unit cover page for easy studying and reference. Each unit cover page has a symbol that is meaningful to the unit at the top and a "Big Question" that we will ask ourselves throughout the unit. 

So on the second day of school, we watched the Brainpop video on the writing of the Declaration of Independence and made very brief, but meaningful notes. 

Then, we made a foldable using an idea I saw on Pinterest. The foldable includes the language of the original Preamble in one color and the meaning in modern English accessible to ESL students at the bottom in another corner. 

On Wednesday, we split into buddy reading groups using "If You Were There When They Wrote the Constitution." Before beginning, I modeled using my classroom plush dinosaurs what good and not good buddy reading looks like. Then, I had the students read only certain parts of the book and report out to the class on them. Our notes looked like below:

And lastly, we added a similar foldable which has the Preamble to the Constitution on it. It looks longer but is actually faster because it has a fewer words.

Thursday, we did a gallery walk. Students had a sheet of copy paper with labels like: Hands/Feet, Voices, Homework, Attitude, etc. labeled on it and we went around the room writing and brainstorming rules. Then we drafted them together onto a huge sheet of brown bulletin board paper and everyone signed it.  (Photo soon to come!)