Helpful Social Studies Website

http://games.pppst.com/socialstudies.html

This website has tons of social studies lesson plans as well as interactive games for students. You can find a lesson plan for any social studies topic. For example the site has them broken down into categories such as World History, America History, Geography, and many more. When you click one of these it brings up other topics such as Jamestown, the 13 Colonies, or Government. This makes searching for lesson plans on a particular topic much easier and less time consuming. The site also offers free PowerPoint downloads on whatever topic you choose.  One of the lesson plans I found on the site was titled Voyage To Plymouth. This was for kindergarten. The classroom was set up like a ship. The students pretended to take a voyage to Plymouth. The teacher reads the students a book about this voyage. The students will use evidence from the text to describe how the people on the voyage may have felt. The students will also keep a journal of their voyage, using words and pictures. I thought this was a really neat activity that kindergarten students would really enjoy. This plan also integrates the language arts as well as social studies. This activity is just for the first day of this unit there are many more hands on lesson plans for this unit!

Class Reflection

I really liked the timeline of me and museum activities. I think it is a great way for students to learn about events that has happened in their life time not only in the world, but in their families. The timeline also helped me personally to see other events, world and family, that I had not previously known about. I really learned a lot from this activity and feel like my students would as well. Also, this is an activity that parents can get involved in and help students fill in the parts they are unsure of.  I could see myself using this activity in my own classroom!