Social Studies Long Range Planning

We are sharing our planning responsibilities as a grade level this year and I get to take the charge on the social studies (government, civics, geography, and economics) plans.

This is how I feel:

My undergraduate focus wasn't education, it was pre-law.  However, you can't major in pre-law, so it was Political Science with a minor in Global Studies and certificates in Civic Education as well as Philosophy, Politics, and Law.  However, I didn't end up in law school and thank goodness for that!

I do hold a master's degree (and thirty additional credits) in education, so I have a pretty good idea what to do in the classroom.  (Seven years' worth of experience helps too!)

I'm excited to get to synthesize my extensive background knowledge into a cohesive, scaffolded introduction to the social sciences.

We are starting with {What is Geography?} and the {5 themes of geography} before we move into different types of maps, including this {sort}.  From there, we'll dive into regions utilizing Mystery Skype and the map.

You know, the map:

After that we'll move into Native American Indian Research Projects and have them write a fiction story based on their research.  They'll create diaries as a member of a Native American Indian tribe.  This will tentatively be happening as our culminating writing project in November, thus integrating social studies and writing.

From there, we'll review colonial history before moving into branches of government.  I plan to embed economics into each region (in addition to land forms to pre-teach the FOSS kit they'll be doing in humanities).

I hope to have all of this fun wrapped up around winter break, but know I have a much larger window if needed.  I know GATE is focusing on multiple perspectives in history this year with a focus on the colonial period, so that's exciting to have that built in extension for my students.

As I finalize products and plans, they'll be available on TpT!  Stay tuned :)