Social Studies Toolbox

I just finished a Civic Literacy and Engagement Workbook for my Life Skills students. Civics is not offered at my high school so it is incumbent upon our U.S. History teachers to infuse the topic into their history lessons. This is a huge challenge considering the difficulty involved in covering the content we are expected to cover in U.S. History, especially in any depth. I've been a strong advocate of civic literacy my entire teaching career. I make it a priority. I infuse these topics into all my courses, any chance I get. This year I've expanded my "Civic Literacy and Engagement" unit in my Life Skills class to a month-long unit from a two-week long unit. I spend 2-3 days covering the basics (which is essentially review because most of my Life Skills students have taken U.S. History with me where I cover this material more extensively). We review the structure and framework of local, state, and federal government as well as key terms. The following week, we work...

I've been using Eve Bunting's The Terrible Things" in my high school history classes for years. I have my students read a choral reading version of the powerful children's book (an allegory of the Holocaust) and participate in small and large group discussions following the reading. In my opinion, it's one of the more memorable lessons and activities of the school year. To help facilitate discussion, this year I created task cards to hand out to students working in small groups. Each task card has a question relating to the allegory. The task cards work much better than how I facilitated discussion in the past - usually by me shouting out questions to the class one at a time. The problem with that method was some groups were ready to move on and others weren't finished discussing the last question. Teacher tip: I laminate my cards so I can reuse them year after year. I am offering my task cards for free in my Tpt store if you would like a set for your class...