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Showing posts with label Ancient History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ancient History. Show all posts
Friday, July 25, 2025
Friday, November 29, 2024
Free Weekly Lesson Guides for Ancient & American History
You have a lot on your plate each week as a teacher. You are balancing a mountain of work and finding time to create engaging lesson plans each week is a challenge - even when you love that part of your job! Between preparing activities, researching videos and resources, and ensuring your lessons align with educational standards...it can get overwhelming. But what if you could receive a comprehensive lesson guide each week, packed with exciting activities, resources, websites, video links and more - all completely free?
What's Included in the Weekly Lesson Guides?
- Lesson Ideas: Find ideas and plans for engaging and interactive social studies lessons including bell ringer ideas, discussion questions, activity ideas and exit ticket prompts.
- Student-Centered Activities: Each week includes relevant resources to engage your students in the study of history. Depending on the week's topic, you may find links to interactive notebooks, graphic organizers, skits, informational text, document analysis, projects and so much more!
- Website Links: I love finding student-friendly websites! Throughout the weeks, you'll find curated links to educational websites and online resources to enrich your lessons.
- Video Links: Find recommendations to relevant YouTube videos to supplement your social studies lessons and bring topics to life in new ways!
Why Should You Sign Up for the Free Lesson Guides?
- You'll Save Time: Lighten your load! These weekly lesson guides are designed to give you back valuable time in your week. Just open your weekly email and find a treasure trove of activities, links and videos to give your lesson planning a head start.
- Engage Your Students: Keep your students excited about history with lessons that are designed to be both educational and fun. From class discussion and debate ideas to skits, projects and other interactive activities, you'll never know what you'll discover each week!
- Access to a Digital Library of Lesson Guides: You'll always have access to lesson guides from past weeks. No matter where you are in your curriculum this year, you can look back and discover valuable lesson ideas that have been added to the Digital Library!
How to Sign Up for Free Weekly Lesson Guides
Ready to get started? Signing up is easy and completely free! Choose which lesson guide you want (you can totally choose both!) and enter your name and email address below to start receiving the weekly lesson guides!
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
A Classroom Favorite: Historical Thinking Skills Web Quest
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I love creating engaging activities for students which bring history to life in my classroom. Before my middle school social studies classes dive into the study of history in depth, we always start off the year with a unit about historical thinking. Students learn about the differences between primary and secondary sources and how to analyze historical documents. These basic skills will be a significant part of our units of study throughout the year, so it's an important topic to teach at the start of the school year!
One of the activities I love to use with my students is a Historical Thinking Web Quest (click the link!) which you can download for FREE!
What is a web quest? A web quest is a digital scavenger hunt. Students use multiple types of sources on the internet to discover answers to questions. It's a great way to introduce new concepts or review previously learned material.
In the Historical Thinking Skills Web Quest, students will visit two websites and watch a YouTube video to learn about the differences between primary and secondary sources, understand how to analyze historical documents and even practice their skills by analyzing a famous painting from American history! There's also a Check Your Knowledge section at the end that prompts students to review their new knowledge of historical thinking skills.
Oh...AND the free download includes a printable PDF and a link to a Google Slides version as well for all my techy teachers. :)
I absolutely love working alongside amazing Social Studies teachers like you and I can't wait for you to try this web quest in your own classroom!
Happy Teaching!
Sunday, January 29, 2023
The Benefits of Using a Word Wall in the Middle School Classroom
The Benefits of Using a Word Wall in the Middle School Classroom
Do you use a word wall in your classroom? A word wall is a wall (or bulletin board) where frequently used words are posted for students to see. In my middle school Social Studies classroom, my word wall is filled with vocabulary words from our current unit. The more students see and interact with the vocabulary words, the more comfortable they will be when using them in group discussions, in writing activities, when making new connections between concepts and more!
What Does a Word Wall Look Like in the Classroom?
A word wall is placed in a location where students can easily see it during class. I have a specific location in my classroom where my word wall stays all year. The words on the wall change with each unit, but the location remains the same. When teaching or reinforcing vocabulary words during a unit, you can point to the words and easily refer to them frequently throughout the year. Students also know exactly where to look to review words and definitions! Your word wall can include vocabulary words or vocabulary words and their definitions. I also love to include pictures alongside the words so that students can see the word, definition and a symbol or picture that represents the word at the same time.
How Can I Make a Word Wall?
Making a word wall is easy! You can type the words (or words and their definitions) on the computer and print them out. You can also use index cards and write one word on each index card. If you're looking for ways to save time, I've created word walls for each Ancient History and American History unit in my TPT store! (Click here to check them out) Just print and post them on your wall and you're ready to go. You can even laminate them and save them for future years!
How Can I Use a Word Wall?
It's important to use your word wall frequently throughout the year. Point to the words when you use them in the unit and encourage students to reference the word wall during class activities and discussions. The vocabulary activities in my TPT store directly correspond to the word walls so that students are consistently engaging with the words in dedicated vocabulary activities and within the instructional activities for the unit as well. It's fun to involve students in creating the word wall, too! When a new word is introduced, allow a student to place it on the word wall. The more they interact with it, the more confident they will be in using the vocabulary during class.
A Bonus for You!
If you're on the fence about using word walls in class, I invite you to try one for free! Fill out the form below and I'll send the Introduction to Social Studies Word Wall directly to your inbox. It is a great resource to use at the beginning of the year when you are introducing foundational topics or to keep up all year long for students to see! After all, they're probably frequently using words like point of view, bias, primary source, secondary source, timeline, chronology and more all throughout the year. Fill out the form and print and post your word wall in the classroom today!
Saturday, January 14, 2023
5 Reasons to Love Social Studies Web Quests
There's nothing quite like the feeling of looking around your classroom and seeing students engaged in an activity that introduces them to a new concept or deepens their learning. I'm always on the hunt for activities that will keep students' interest and web quests are one of my go-to resources for that very reason.
P.S. Stick around until the end of this post to snag a web quest to use with your students - a little gift to you!
What's a web quest? A web quest is a digital scavenger hunt. During the activity, students visit websites or watch short videos on platforms like YouTube while answering questions or completing various tasks.
5 Reasons to Love Web Quests
Reason #1: Web Quests Engage Students
I know I said this before, but it's that important to me! I love using diverse activities in Social Studies units. Today it's a web quest, tomorrow they'll focus on guided notes, next week they'll design a creative project - you get the idea! There are certainly common activities that keep each unit "grounded" (interactive notebook notes, for example), but I also love to keep things fresh. Web quests are an easy choice for that reason! Since students are visiting multiple websites, it keeps their interest in the activity. They also have to read and "hunt" for answers in different places
Reason #2: Web Quests Use a Variety of Sources
As history teachers, we love using a variety of primary and secondary sources throughout our units, right?! Web quests take students on a journey through web sites and videos that prompt them to analyze different sources and use historical thinking skills to answer questions. In the span of one class period, students might interact with informational text from a secondary source, analyze a historical document and watch a video that features both secondary and primary sources. In the process of completing a web quest, they're activating their critical thinking skills to analyze these sources and reach conclusions.
Reason #3: Web Quests Promote Critical Thinking
When I create web quests, I love incorporating a wide variety of question types to promote critical thinking skills. A mixture of questions that prompt students to recall facts, explain concepts, and interpret documents are used in conjunction with questions that ask students to compare and contrast various sources or ideas, defend their opinion and more. I love asking students to stretch their minds and think critically and creatively about the topics they're learning in class. It's easy and fun to do through a web quest! (Click here to see some of my favorites!)
Reason #4: Web Quests Help Students Learn Research Skills
My administrator loves seeing students use technology safely and productively in class. Web quests, by nature, promote that very practice! Students are guided to various sources online to answer questions and complete tasks. They get to practice using online sources that are reputable and safe. Oftentimes, they'll return to those websites on their own when completing research projects, which is so awesome to see! I always preview every website I send my students to before assigning a web quest. Making sure the links work properly and it's a website I feel confident using with my students is super important.
Reason #5: Web Quests Are Easy
As teachers, we're always keeping our eyes open to spot ideas and activities that will be easy to implement in the classroom. I love a good challenge, but there are some days when I want something that's effective, meets the state standards, engages my students...and is easy to implement in my classroom. Do you ever feel the same way? Web quests meet all of those goals. If I'm using a printable web quest, I'll often make the links available on my class website so students can click on each one when needed. When I use the digital version, I just assign it to my students and PRESTO! They can click on the links in the web quest themselves and off they go.
If you want to try a web quest in your classroom, I'd love to send you one as a gift! Fill out the form below and a download will be sent to your inbox. I'll also keep you updated on exciting lesson ideas, inspiration for your classroom and welcome you to a community of teachers who share your passion in bringing history to life in our classrooms!
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