May is finally here! Testing is over, but behavior is blooming. Kids are mentally exhausted. It’s the perfect time to turn the helm over to your students. Let them use the skills they gained this year to create their learning path with a real-world Social Studies wrap-up project.
Real-World Social Studies
The model is your community. If you live in a large city, focus on your suburb. The goal is to get your students into active learning mode. Get them up and creating. Let them show you what they learned. This is the chance for students to bring their learning to life– from deciding how buildings are made to what businesses to include.
Bringing it All Together
Start with he map, but don’t stop there. With Geography, Economics, and Civics all in play, the class will recreate more than the — they’ll model the community. To truly create your real-world Social Studies wrap-up, your kids will rely on Geography, Economics, and Civics concepts learned throughout this year.
Hands-On Geography
This is the most direct concept of the project. You start with your school block, making your way through the attendance area to the business district. You will guide your students to think about direction, relative location, and land use. These ideas help build a strong foundation for spatial thinking.
This is a rough order of Geography activities that we did:
- Have everyone work on the roads, gluing construction paper, using tape, or using black markers.
- Have student construct their home using milk carton or juice box.
- Label the landforms and man-made landmarks as a group.
- designate bodies of water with felt, construction paper, or blue markers.
Economics in Action
Putting economic theory into practice will help students make their learning long-term. Let class vote to make operational decisions. As they build the town, kids will think about the goods and services their town will need, who provides them, and how people get what they want and need.
This is a great way to incorporate producers, consumer, jobs, and even the basics of spending, saving, and trading–all through creative decision making. Again, here’s the activities we did:
- Code the commercial businesses. Use red roofs for those selling goods. Use blue roofs for those housing services. Use purple roofs for those businesses that hold both.
- Poll the parents in the grade level. Have their student record a short video of them describing their job responsibilities.
- Google the type of goods or services produced in your town, and any environmental connections.
- Highlight the food choices available. Tie that into cultural areas if where appropriate.
- Have a community helper day. Let students dress up.
- EXTRA: Have kids pair up, plan a business they think is missing in the town and choose a place on the map where it will go.
Civics Made Simple
As your students build the model of their town, it’s the perfect opportunity to explore what makes a community work. From Laws to the rights and responsibilities of citizens, conversations help kids understand the roles people play in keeping the town safe, fair, and running smoothly.
There are activities you can work in that show citizenship:
- designate Public Goods and Services in the community
- Tie in the National or State budget spent in your town.
- Highlight city, state, or county offices
- research the basic laws in your town or state, and make billboards.
- Invite the mayor, city, or state representative to come visit when the project is finished. Let them share their plans for the town, or any historical photos they have.
How to Make it Happen
In May, teachers are just as tired as the students are. Make sure that the students are doing the lion’s share of the work. If they have ideas, have them problem-solve the steps to make it happen.
This is not a small project. You want the maximum about of learning shown directly by the students. Here’s a few tips:
- Use Google Maps. Start at your school. Enlarge it until the houses in the attendance area are the size of a milk carton.
- project that map and sketch roads onto white butcher paper pieces. We made the “blocks” around 3 streets by 3 streets. (for most)
- decide on how to make the roads (markers, construction paper strips, tape)
- We divided up our “blocks” among the 3 classes, we all worked on the same concept on the same day. We did: roads-houses-businesses-Goods & Services-Invent a Business-gluing all the blocks together and placing the buildings on the map.
Resources for Map Making
This resource has mini-lessons for all map features. It also explains in detail how to get started with your school block. It has relative location activities that you can do with your map once it is made. Click on the cover to see the preview and description
I hope you got a few good ideas.
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