If you’ve been watching the 8th-grade Social Studies STAAR results for the last few years, you already know the story: the line is flat. Not collapsing, not climbing — flat. And flat is its own kind of frustrating, because it’s the result you get when a lot of real effort goes in and nothing comes out the other side.

I dug into three years of statewide results alongside the redesigned test itself to figure out why. The short version: the scores aren’t stuck because kids don’t know enough history. They’re stuck because the test stopped rewarding knowing history and started rewarding reasoning over sources — and most instruction hasn’t made the same shift. I’ve spent years training Social Studies teachers and consulting in classrooms, and this is the gap I keep seeing.

The problem in one picture

Across the state, the average scale score moved about nine points over three years. On a scale where district scores spread out by more than 200 points, that’s noise, not progress. Underneath the flat average, districts rose and fell in almost equal numbers — a coin flip that cancels itself out. There’s plenty of motion; there’s just no shared direction. High performing districts dropped and lower performing districts grew… leaving flat results statewide.

Meanwhile, the redesigned test tells you exactly where students are losing ground. On the foundational, most heavily weighted standards — the causes of the American Revolution, unalienable rights, the Bill of Rights, core constitutional principles — students are answering correctly only 15 to 30 percent of the time. Those aren’t trivia items. They’re the load-bearing walls of the entire course. When the foundation sits at one-in-five, there’s a ceiling on everything built above it.

So why isn’t more teaching fixing it? Because of what the test now asks students to do. Here are the two conclusions I keep coming back to — the ones that follow most directly from the data, and that shape how I think every 8th-grade course should be built.

Conclusion 1: Build the course around source analysis, not content delivery

The items on this test are not recall questions. They live at Depth of Knowledge levels 2 and 3: students have to interpret primary documents, figure out where a principle actually comes from (is this Marbury v. Madison or the Bill of Rights?), and reason through cause and effect. A student who memorized that the cotton gin existed still can’t answer an item asking them to analyze its effects.

That gap is the whole problem in miniature. “Knowing the content” and “passing the item” have become two different targets. Class time spent on recall — timelines, vocabulary lists, lectures students copy down — builds the first target and barely touches the second. The knowledge doesn’t transfer to a test built on reasoning, so the effort is real but the score stays flat.

What transfers is practice that looks like the test. That means daily work with primary sources and two relentless questions: What does this show? Why does it matter? Put a primary source in front of students, ask them to say what it tells us and why it’s significant, and do it often enough that analysis becomes a habit rather than an event. The content still matters — but it should arrive through sources students reason about, not in lectures they memorize and a test they then reason on cold.

Conclusion 2: Treat reading proficiency as part of the Social Studies plan

There’s a second bottleneck hiding underneath the first, and it’s easy to misread as a history problem when it isn’t one.

These items are reading-heavy and source-heavy. To answer them, a student first has to decode dense stimulus text and unpack academic vocabulary — before any historical thinking even begins. That means a meaningful chunk of the social studies score is gated by reading ability. For your lower-performing students especially, the thing standing between them and a correct answer may not be that they don’t know the history. It may be that they can’t get through the passage.

If that’s true, then treating a flat Social Studies score as purely a content problem will keep producing flat results, because you’re solving the wrong problem. The more productive move is focus on content reading instruction in your own classroom. Students need explicit work on academic vocabulary, the specific language of sourcing and documents, and the plain reading stamina it takes to work through a dense primary or secondary source without giving up. Social Studies and reading aren’t separate projects on this test. The score lives at their intersection.

How we built socialstudies+ around this

Everything above is the reason Social Studies+ exists. When Jodi and I built the program — a partnership between Social Studies Success® and lead4ward, designed for the redesigned 8th-grade course — we didn’t organize it around covering content faster. We organized it around the two things the test actually rewards.

Take one of our lessons on the Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t ask students to memorize a date and move on. It opens by having them analyze two period paintings, then walks them through the document itself in six primary-source excerpts they have to read and reason about, returning again and again to what does this show, and why does it matter? It closes with a short constructed-response task scored on a two-part rubric — one point for explaining the idea, one point for explaining why it mattered. That’s the exact move students lose points on when they answer only half of a two-part STAAR item. We make them rehearse it.

The same lesson treats reading as part of Social Studies rather than someone else’s job. It front-loads the academic vocabulary the document depends on — grievance, consent, tyranny, unalienable rights — builds in guided reading and structured partner talk, and provides read-aloud supports for students who can’t yet decode dense founding-era language on their own. That’s the bottleneck we keep coming back to: a student who understands the history but can’t get through the passage looks, on a test score, exactly like a student who doesn’t know the content. We design so that reading is scaffolded, not assumed.

I want to be straight about evidence, because this whole post is built on reading data honestly. Across campuses that used the program over multiple years, the most encouraging signal is at the Meets level — the deeper-learning indicator — where the cohort moved up over two years, with a number of campuses posting sizable gains. What I’ll say is narrower and, I think, more useful: the test changed, and these materials are built for the test it became.

The bottom line

The flat line isn’t a mystery and it isn’t a verdict on anyone’s effort. It’s what you’d predict from a redesigned test that rewards reasoning over sources, layered on instruction still organized around delivering and recalling content, layered on reading demands we haven’t fully accounted for.

The encouraging part: both fixes are within reach and neither requires new content. Teach students to reason over documents the way the test asks them to, and make sure they can actually read the documents in the first place. Move those two things, and the line that’s been flat for years finally has somewhere to go.

Check out socialstudies+ here, and if you are interested in short online PD sessions, you can find them here.

The post The Stagnant STAAR – Why Your Test Scores Aren’t Moving appeared first on Social Studies Success.

But what is a History Lab? It is exactly what it sounds like…students examine artifacts and not only infer information from the artifact, but also draw conclusions from a multitude of examples.

Let’s take a look at a History Lab in action.  In this lesson, students are learning about the battles and key individuals involved in the Civil War.  After learning the content, they will examine artifacts in Battle Stations that consist of primary source images and quotes. Once your students examine the images and quotes, they will draw a conclusion – What is all of this information telling me? What battle are these artifacts referencing?

Once your students have analyzed the artifacts, they will write their conclusions citing their evidence.  Model your expectations for how to cite evidence. You can use a piece of evidence that is not in one of your Battle Stations for a model.  Demonstrate how to pull out key information from a source, and then use that source, as well as multiple others, to draw a conclusion.

The beauty of the History Labs comes with the opportunity to expose your students to a variety of primary sources in an engaging format – they will want to read to figure out the clues to support their answer.

Once your students have analyzed the evidence for a Battle Station, allow them to move to another to analyze new artifacts.  Also, add tangible artifacts to your History Labs if you can! A pair of army boots, a feather and an ink pot, blue and gray fabric, can all add interest to a station.

This History Lab is a part of the socialstudies+ membership with lead4ward, but look for other examples soon!

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Secondary Social Studies Interventionist

As any good teacher does, I often eavesdrop.  During my fourteen years of eavesdropping,  I’ve heard social studies teachers lament that they are “not reading teachers”.  Whenever I hear this my French alter ego says  “Au contraire, mon frere”.  Social studies teachers are charged with helping students build the background knowledge required to read and comprehend social studies primary and secondary sources, identify cause and effect relationships, and draw inferences and conclusions.

Why is background knowledge important in social studies?

Students inherently come to school with valuable background knowledge, however, how many 12- year- olds have background knowledge of European Colonization? Research has shown that students are more successful learning new content when the new information is tied to their background knowledge. Teachers must be strategic when building background knowledge to help ensure students understand social studies concepts such as federalism, net-worth statements, modern genocides, and terrorism.

Strategies for building background knowledge in social studies.

Picture Walk

A picture walk is a pre-reading activity where students will take a look or a “walk” through the documents of a unit. These documents can include images, maps, charts, diary entries, or other primary and secondary sources.  Students “walk” the documents and make predictions about the unit based on the who, what, when, where, and why of the items. A great example of picture walks can be found in my resource on earthquakes.  Students examine the different images of the impact of the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1864 prior to reading about the impact of an earthquake. 

Tea Parties

This strategy not only helps students to activate background knowledge by anticipating what they will cover in the unit, but it also encourages students to participate in discourse.  The teacher simply writes statements on an index card and students’ job is to mingle and read as many statements as they can in an allotted time.  After the time is up, students will discuss what they surmise about the text from the statements found on the index cards.  This requires students to sequence, make connections, collaborate, and move! This is a really fun strategy to see your students try to figure out their clues.  I have a version of this strategy called “Book Bits” in my Early English Colonies lesson on Jamestown and Plymouth. 

Word Webs 

Word webs are visual organizers to help students organize background knowledge.  The teacher will create categories for a unit and the students work together to list as many things that they already know about the subject.  This strategy is also referred to as mind mapping.

Social Studies teachers must use strategies to help students build background knowledge.  Students need a way to organize the new information with what they already know.  This approach will help students acquire content knowledge to succeed in Social Studies.

Kydra Hubbard is an Instructional Coach with over 14 years of experience in social studies education.  Kydra has taught a variety of subjects, including U.S. History, Geography, and International Baccalaureate History of the Americas. Kydra has used her classroom experience to prepare for presentations at the Texas Council for Social Social and Fundamental 5 National Summit.

Recently earning a specialization in organizational leadership from Abilene Christian University, Kydra believes that continued success in social studies education requires leadership that focuses on advocacy to organize programs that engage everyone in a community.

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• Manipulatives will help students focus better and have more fun learning.
• Manipulatives engage students physically and visually.
• Manipulatives often give students opportunities to interact with other students and learn teamwork.
• Students learning with manipulatives will be able to practice the skills of categorization and comparison.
• Student retention will increase after using manipulatives.
• Students are incentivized to participate which improves their social skills and communication.

Manipulatives for Instruction

Find or create tangible artifacts for students to explore. Ask a series of spiral questions like: What do you see? What do you think each artifact represents? What do you think the purpose of these artifacts are? Can you categorize the artifacts? Is there a cause and effect relationship between any of the artifacts? What would you title your box?    You can find resources for your boxes at garage sales, dollar stores, or Goodwill. Artifact boxes work great to introduce and era or region, but you must be careful to avoid controversial topics with these boxes.  Do not create one for the Civil War, Reconstruction or the Holocaust.

Modeling clay or Play Dough is another tool you can use in the classroom.  Give your students a reading over a topic and challenge your students to create a 3-D visual of what they have just read. Your directions can look as simple as this –

1.Read the handout.

2.Choose a topic in the reading that appeals to you.

3.Create a sculpture out of Play Dough on your topic.

4.Write a brief summary explaining your topic and your sculpture.

Scavenger hunts are fun for students! You can create clues or different questions on cards.  Students can hunt for the answers by reading placards you have posted around the room. Provide an answer sheet and watch them go!

Manipulatives for Review

Manipulatives are wonderful for review! Not only do they get your students off of the computer, but they also provide visual models for skill-based practice.

Use sorts to categorize content, and then challenge students to make cause / effect connections. Sorts help students categorize large chunks of information into a game-like format.

I absolutely LOVE Hexagonal Thinking! Hexagonal thinking helps students make connections across time, as well as making a mind-map for your kids.

Are you reviewing for a “Causes of” or “Events Leading to” test? Make manipulatives of the key events and allow students to practice sequencing the events as well as creating a spectrum of the most/least important event.

Check out my store for these manipulatives for your class!

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The first place you have to start is with questions about content – What is your history standard? What are you try to teach? What do you need your students to learn? Not all content will work in stations, you need a topic that has breadth but does not need to be taught in chronological order (that is why events leading to… don’t work for stations – students can’t see the cause and effect). Great topics for stations include geographic regions – like Australia or Russia for example, or a topic that can be examined from many different points of view – like the American Revolution and its impact on different groups of people.  I have also created stations on Westward Expansion and Cotton, Cattle, and Railroads – so you can see centers work for a variety of topics.

Then think about the specific content for each station.  How will your students be learning the content? Will there be a reading? Video clip? Once your students learn the content, how will they prove to you they have learned it? Will you have questions, will they need to complete a task? How are you tying all of the content together? In my experience, I love using lap books to tie content together.  Students complete a section of their lap book in a station, then an activity to process the information. Activity ideas can include a color-by-number, sensory figure, or journal entry. When your students are finished, they have a completed lap book and a variety of learning activities that all tie to your content.

The next set of questions you need to ask yourself is about time. How much time can you dedicate to these standards? How much time will each student need to complete a station? How much time will it take for students to transition between stations? Are the students moving or are the stations moving? I have always found that station activities need to be short and sweet – make the content concise and then their activity something that can be completed in 10-20 minutes.  Variety is the spice of life… so you will want a variety of activities in your stations as well.  You also don’t want stations to last for more than a few days. Students will get bored and off task. Your station activities also don’t need to be the same length.  If students are provided choice, you can have different activities taking a different amount of time, that way some students will be moving as they complete a station, but some will be staying put.  Have extra stations for students to move to ensuring they are always on task.

Next you need to think through student management.  Are students being assigned a certain station to start or do they have choice? Are there a certain number of stations students need to complete, or just a percentage? How are you going to keep track of what stations students have completed? What are your plans for when students get off task? The best answer I have found for student management is the use of a checklist.  You can require your students to check in with you after they complete each station.  Then you can quickly see who is not progressing at the same rate as everyone else.  Those students can be pulled into a small group for specific remediation. You can grab a free checklist here.

Student management also includes the management of classroom resources.  Set up your stations in advance, put everything (if you can) in a folder or large envelope so you can quickly pick up or pass out the station.  If your stations require colored pencils or other resources, put them in the envelope or folder so everything is together.  Color code your envelopes or folders so students can quickly see if they have completed the station.  Type up directions for the station and place them on the outside of the folder or envelope so you do not have to repeat your directions every single time students move and start a new station.

The final step includes modeling.  You will need to model how you want everything done in your classroom.  What are the students using to take notes? Model how to take the notes. What are the students reading? Model where to find the reading. What do they need to do when they are finished with the activity? Model how to turn the resource into you.  The more modeling you do at the beginning will yield better results during the lesson.

Let me know how it goes!

The post Creating Successful Social Studies Stations appeared first on Social Studies Success.

First of all, I have seen this era taught in many different ways, I still think the chronological approach is best for helping students see the connections between the events of the New Republic.  I would approach this unit through the lens of the presidents and their actions (foreign and domestic) throughout the era.  This can make a great anchor chart for your unit and you can also use a card sort at the end to reinforce those connections.

While you are planning your unit – think about the vocabulary instruction that will be required.  There are so many important terms that are necessary for student understanding.  I would recommend using the Word Wall terms to pre-teach vocabulary prior to each lesson, then make sure you practice the terms throughout the unit.

Washington

Washington was our first president and arguably deserves the most time in your unit. The key to approaching Washington is to focus on the challenges he faced and how the United States benefited from his leadership.

• Start out with his inauguration and precedents – Doodle Notes can really show how he was faced with so many challenges and how they were addressed.
• Next you will want to teach about Hamilton’s Financial Plan and the impact on the United States – this is when you will want to pull in the songs from the musical Hamilton to increase engagement!
• Transition next into foreign relations. How did other nations react to the formation of the United States? I have a resource describing the foreign issues impacting Washington’s presidency (French Revolution, Proclamation of Neutrality, and Jay’s Treaty).
• These lessons will make a great transition into the formation of the first political parties – and it will make sense for your students. Engage your students with a puppet debate between Hamilton and Jefferson! After reading about the point of view of the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists, your students will create a Puppet Show Debate to perform to their classmates. Sounds like it will take a lot of time, but it doesn’t! And with this standard being tested often, it is important that our students understand the key differences between the first two political parties.
• What about Washington’s Farewell Address? Explore his ideas with primary source clues where students can match images to excerpts from Washington’s Farewell Address – practice skills and learn content at the same time! Need quicker coverage, simply reduce the number of quotes.

Adams

Can you imagine trying to follow George Washington? What foreign and domestic issues did John Adams confront during his presidency? Allow your students to learn about the presidency of John Adams with political cartoons, readings, and Doodle Notes. 

Jefferson

Jefferson was pivotal in the growth of the United States. Keep your students engaged in his presidency with a project on Jefferson. Try creating a character collage with your students on Thomas Jefferson. Engage your students in with a reading activity, Doodle Notes, and character collage.

Madison

Of course the key to Madison is the War of 1812 – Engage your students in with a reading activity, Mini-Doodle Note Booklet and primary source analysis. Your students will make a book highlighting the causes and effects of the War of 1812.

Monroe 

James Monroe was the 5th president of the United States with an important foreign event during his presidency. His presidency is an excellent opportunity to reinforce Social Studies skills like analyzing political cartoons.  Encourage your students to learn about the presidency of James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine with political cartoons, readings, and Doodle Notes.

Court Cases of the New Republic

The court cases can be confusing for your students.  You will need to break them down and then practice with the different components of each case – repetition is the key! Have your students read about John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden. I recommend previewing the activity with the Character Quotes activity on John Marshall. After reading and completing the graphic organizer, students can review the content either by playing a sorting game or spoons.

Phew! You are done!!! Or are you? With this much content, you will need constant and planned review throughout your unit.  What about games? I have designed task cards and Boom Cards for quick check for understanding and reviews.  At the end of the unit you have several options before you test!

New Republic Card Sort – The purpose of this game is to help students make connections between the presidents in the New Republic and the their key events. They can play the card sort in class as a game, then take the answer key home to study. The game includes multiple rounds and multiple ways to sort the cards.

Hexagonal Thinking – Hexagonal Thinking is a fun review game using hexagons to show key relationships between events, people, places and vocabulary terms. In this game, students are challenged to place cards representing key ideas from the New Republic in a way that shows the relationship between different parts of history.

And now you made it!! I hope you received some tips for organizing your New Republic unit – and as a treat for you, I am going to give you a discount code to use! Type in the code “NewRepublic” when you check out for a 20% discount on all of my New Republic resources.

Happy Teaching!

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So what is Hexagonal Thinking? Hexagonal thinking is a great strategy to help students review relationships between events and connections over time.  The 6-sided hexagon shapes allow students to build deeper connections and make conceptual thinking visible. The discussion between students as they play with the resource can also help cement ideas and understandings of key events. In other words, students have fun while making connections within their content! 

Prior to using this strategy, you will have a few decisions to make; you will need to decide if you want this to be a permanent product, or for students to simply explore the connections and have deep discussions.  Will your students will glue down the shapes onto paper and turn that in for a grade? Or will they annotate their hexagon using post-it notes or index cards?

If you choose to glue down the shapes, you will need 1 set of game pieces for every group throughout the day.  If you want to annotate with post-it notes, you can make fewer copies, but I would recommend that you laminate the hexagon shapes prior to class.

Here are the step by step directions for using Hexagonal Thinking in your class:

• Prepare your set of Hexagon shapes.  You can make your own set using hexagon shapes in PowerPoint or use a set that has already been created.  Make sure you are including all of the key information you want your students to review in a particular unit.  If you can add images, that will help cement content with your students.

• Introduce the students to the game by modeling how to rearrange the hexagon shapes to show relationships between people, places, events, dates, and key vocabulary terms. An effective model is the key for making this strategy work! If you don’t want to use content examples, you can always create a set based on your school or current pop culture information.

• Challenge your students to arrange the shapes showing these relationships between people, places, events, dates, and key vocabulary terms.  To make it into a game format, you can award points for the number of connections students can make between shapes.  Each side of the hexagon is worth 1 point. The more connections students can make between shapes, the more points they earn.

• Encourage students to annotate their thinking, either by gluing the shapes down on paper and writing next to each cluster of shapes – or – by using post-it notes to annotate their connections.

• Listen… walk around the different groups and listen to their conversations, encourage your students by asking different questions about their connections and evaluating their explanations.

Looking for a twist on Hexagonal Thinking as a review activity? Use Hexagonal Thinking during a lesson for students to make a connection after a reading.  In my Colonization of Latin America activity, I have created several sets of hexagons that can be passed out after each page of reading.  Students start with one set of hexagons, and then as they read more information, they layer in more Hexagon shapes.  I recommend creating the hexagon shapes on different colored paper so that students can see change over time.

If you like Hexagonal Thinking, I have several sets created for you – both as an assessment and as a processing activity after a reading.  You can find them here.

Let me know what you think in the comments below

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• Ask 3 or Tell 2 – Break up a lecture with a quick task card activity. Choose task cards that are relevant to certain topics in your lecture. Pass out the task cards to your students.  Allow your students to stand up and ask 3 different students the question on their task card – or – tell 2 different students the answer to their question on their task card.  After a certain amount of time, have your students sit back down and continue the lecture.

• Early Finishers – With a little bit of prep, you have activities that can keep your students from losing valuable instructional time. Print off several sets of the task cards and cut them out.  Place them in a baggie with the answer key. Designate a location in your room (like a bookshelf) where you will always keep them.  When students finish an assignment, they can grab a partner and a set of task cards.  Your students can quiz each other over the questions on the task cards, competing for points.

• Scoot – Do your kids need to get up and moving to get blood flowing back to their brain? Play a quick game of scoot with task cards. Place the cards in order around the room on your walls or in the hallway.  Give every student an answer sheet and a corresponding number to start (Example: Maria start on 10, John start on 11, etc.).  Challenge your students to answer the questions as they “scoot” from one question to the next.

• Beat the Clock – Place students in small groups of 3 or 4. Give each group a stack of task cards and an answer sheet.  Challenge the students to answer as many questions as they can in a certain time period. The group or individual who gets the most correct wins a small prize.

• War – Use toy soldiers to add an element of fun to a set of task cards. Partner up your students. Each player needs an equal number of soldiers.  Place the task cards face down. Take turns answering the questions.  If you get a question correct, take your opponent’s soldier, if you get the answer incorrect, place a soldier on the “Reserve” card. If you answer a question with a star correctly, you will win all of the soldiers in the “Reserve”. If there is a dispute over the correct answer, check the answer key. The player with the most soldiers at the end of the game wins!

• Flip the Frog – This is a reverse version of Hot Potato. Buy plastic frogs at a dollar store.  Put your students into groups of 3-4 and give each group 1 plastic frog.  Place the task cards face down in a stack.  Students take turns answering the task card questions.  If they get the question correct, they get to hold the frog.  After a certain amount of time, stop the game. The student holding the plastic frog wins.

• Scavenger Hunt – This is another game that will get your students up and out of their seats for a quick brain break. “Hide” the task cards around your room (like on the side of a bookshelf, taped to the side of a desk, etc.). Partner your students and give them an answer sheet. Challenge them to find and answer as many questions as they can in a certain amount of time.  The students with the most correct answers win.

• Focus on a Skill – Do your students need to practice a certain skill like cause and effect or inferencing? Use the task cards that focus on those certain skills for extra practice.

• Exit Tickets – Write a list of numbers on your board. Pass out a task card to each student. Before a student can leave your class, they have to write their answer on the board. This also works great if a student wants to leave the room to get a drink of water, etc. Before they leave, they need to answer a task card question correctly.

• Card Pocking – This is a version of “Egg Pocking” played during Easter – your students will play against each other to stump each other with task card questions. Give each student a task card at random.  Students will find a partner and ask their partner a question.  If they both get it correct, they each go to another student to ask them the question. If one of them gets it incorrect, they sit down.  Once several students have been eliminated, discuss the harder questions whole group.

• Kaboom – Create a quick “Uno” type game with Kaboom! action cards. Place the students into small groups and give them a set of task cards face down.  Include the Kaboom! action cards within each set.  Students will take turns choosing questions and answering them. If they get the question correct, they get to keep the card. If they pull an action card like “Reverse”, they complete the action. If you choose a Kaboom! card, all of the questions they answered correctly go back in the stack. The student with the most correct questions at the end of the game – wins!

• Folder Games – glue several questions into a folder. Students can answer the task card question in each folder and then pass it to another student.

You can find my many task cards sets for Texas History, 8^th Grade US History and High School History in my TPT store or as part of my year long bundles on my website.

The post Playing Games with Task Cards appeared first on Social Studies Success.

Does the game include critical thinking questions? Are there multiple opportunities for students to think about the content in different ways? Some games miss this target. For example, I played Bingo for years – but all the students needed to do was remember a simple definition. While that is helpful for some assessments, it will not provide critical thinking practice for your students. One simple way to incorporate critical thinking is through the questions you ask.  For example, if you are playing the New Republic Sorting Game – the first level of the game is memorization, Who did what? But as the game continues, you can ask cause and effect questions, categorization questions, impact questions and even make connections to events today.

Is the game social? Learning is a social event. If your review is social and allows your students to talk to one another, they will actually continue to learn while they are reviewing.  This is especially true if you teach middle school – your students WANT TO TALK! Provide opportunities for them to talk about history! One of my current favorite games for this is Heroes of History.  Students play this game in small groups while they talk about the different ways people contribute to American History.

Does the game have an element of competition? Points, fake or real, can engage students. If you are using small groups to review, it will allow your weaker students to also have an opportunity to shine. Word Wall Connection Cards are an example of this – kids compete against each other to review key vocabulary concepts. The points are fake, but the engagement is real!

Is it new or different? Novelty is important for students – they are Kahooted out! If every teacher is doing the same type of review and they have seen the game multiple times, the game loses its effectiveness. One example of novelty is to bring in a different element.  I use toys from the Dollar Store to add novelty to review games.  By adding toy soldiers, you can turn task cards into “War”, by using wooden blocks, you can create “Logic Boxes”. Simple solutions can entice jaded teenagers.

Does the game help students make connections? History is packed with content! A great review game will also help your students make connections over time. Sequencing games are my favorite ways to help students make connections – sequencing events, and then the critical thinking questions you ask, help students solidify different pieces of information. The Events Leading to the American Revolution  is an example of how you can do a simple sequencing game.  If you are reviewing for an entire year, you might want to use the Eras of US History Another content connection game is dominos. Students make connections between people, events and vocabulary terms.  If you want to review for an entire year of content, you can easily use a domino game as well.

Can you add a challenge element to your game? Escape rooms are great opportunities for students to solve challenges while they are still reviewing. Students love solving puzzles! You can make a teacher directed challenge like my Constitution Escape Room or a student driven escape room like the End of the Year STAAR Review Escape Room. Adding blacklights and lock boxes enhance the experience for your students.

How can you add a history twist to the ordinary? Take games students have played for years and freshen them up with historical content. Students know how to play memory – now have them play with the Bill of Rights. Students love spoons – play this popular game with the Reconstruction Era. Looping cards are easy, but can they connect people and events in the American Revolution Game?

I hope you enjoy all of these different ideas for review games – and I wish you and your students continued success in Social Studies!

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Lap Books have been a very popular tool for research, study and review in the world of homeschool instruction. The variety of benefits from creating and using Lap Books has helped them to move into the classroom. Lap Books are a personalized summary of a lesson or unit of content. Diana Zike developed the system of student-created file folders creatively arranged with colorful foldables and paper flap manipulatives to display the important components of a lesson or unit. Homeschooling mom, Tami Duby of Virginia, coined the name Lap Book, because everything studied could be held in her children’s laps. The Lap Book provides students with a tangible take-away of their studies. Every time a Lap Book is looked at memories are stimulated and reviewing takes place.

February is just around the corner and maybe you are a lower elementary teacher preparing a unit for Black History Month. Image doing it in a Lap Book! I have a new Black History Month Lap Book that contains complete instructions, templates and 10 content pages covering the History of Black History Month, the Civil Rights Movement, and African-American Leaders in Government, Science, Civil Rights, Sports, Law, Military, Education and Business.

There is no right or wrong way to construct a Lap Book. Lap Books are very unique to each student. There are two components with each Lap Book: the content it contains and the process of the construction.

• The content of a Lap Book is a combination of a notebook and a scrapbook. Within the foldables and flaps, students can record specific facts and information with graphics, such as timelines, diagrams, T-charts and matrices, as well as illustrations and annotated notes. Student opinions and reflections can also be recorded in a Lap Book.
• The process of compiling a Lap Book builds study and organizational skills for the student. Information can be researched. Planning is needed to arrange the information in the Lap Book. The student’s own flare and creativity will be shown in the presentation of the information in the Lap Book. Lap Books can be evaluated and assessed by the student as well as by the teacher.

A Lap Book for a lesson or unit can be started at the beginning of the instruction period in 10 to 20 minutes. As the study progresses, students add to their Lap Books. Before a quiz or test over the material, students can use their Lap Books to review with study partners. A Gallery Walk-Thru, where students have an opportunity to look at everyone’s Lap Book, can be an alternative form of review.

There are many ideas for Lap Book construction available from a variety of homeschool organizations online. You can get some great ideas also watching Lap Book videos on You Tube. The one drawback is these Lap Books are being done by one, maybe two students at time. You may not have the time or the tolerance for the mess with a roomful of students, let alone 6 periods a day. So you might want to look at Pre-Made Lap Book materials. Pre-made materials can provide a model of a Lap Book, which can be very helpful if you are new to Lap Books. Pre-made Lap Book materials can help you introduce the process to you students and give you a ready-made guide for future Lap Book projects.

I also have New Republic Lap Book for summarizing US History from Washington’s Presidency to the Monroe Doctrine. There are readings about Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s differences, the formation of political parties, domestic and foreign issues, the first five presidents, the War of 1812, Supreme Court cases, Washington’s Farewell Address and the Monroe Doctrine.

Is Westward Expansion on your horizon? I also have two versions of the Westward Expansion Lap Book. One is modified for ELL or SPED. There are even two versions within the product: regular and a “less mess” version to save time and, possibly, your sanity. There are nine content pages on Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Florida Cession, the Texas Annexation and the Mexican War and Cession including the Gadsden Purchase, the Oregon Treaty, the Trails West and the California Gold Rush. There are also six primary source analysis readings about the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Florid Cession, the Texas Annexation, the Mexican War and the California Gold Rush.

Are you loving the idea of Lap Books? The take a peek at the US History Lap Book for the end of the year STAAR test. It contains a PowerPoint presentation and all the content AND templates your students will need to review for the end-of-year assessment. Included are maps, quotations, dates, people, ideas, US History Eras and important documents. There are even goal setting “Mini-Me” manipulatives to help your 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grade students customize their Lap Books.

Maybe you have been looking for an alternative to the interactive notebook. Possibly this is the first you have read about Lap Books. Could be you just need something new to revitalize your students. Whatever your reason, take a chance on Lap Books!

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