It's time again to link up with Collaboration Cuties for their Mentor Text Linky. This week's topic is Social Studies.
Ok, I'll be honest I don't actually have a picture book to talk about today, but I do have a really cool social studies resource book to share. Our school is really pushing differentiating in the classroom, which is a little harder to do with social studies and science. My principal bought us teachers a great resource to help out with this. The book is called Differentiating Instruction with Menus by Laurie Westphal.
This book is FILLED with different tic-tac-toe type menus of activities to use with different social studies topics. Some of the topics included are ancient history, American history, geography, and government. It also gives tons of generic ideas that could be adapted for any social studies topic. The activities also range in difficulty, which is great for differentiating among the students. I just received this book so I haven't used it yet, but I am very excited to start figuring out how I can work it into my social studies instruction next year! These books are also available for math, language arts, and science!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)
Wow! This looks like a great resource for my integration next year! Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)
ReplyDeleteBrandee @ Creating Lifelong Learners
My school has a three year plan to revamp everything into differentiated instruction. I used this book as a guide to create a menu on the south region when I taught it this year. My kiddos loved doing it. I look forward to reading more about how you are using DI in your classroom!
ReplyDeleteHunter's Tales from Teaching
Our school board is really promoting differentiated instruction as well - thanks for the heads up about this resource - I still have a little classroom money to spend - I may check this series out.
ReplyDeleteI love the tic-tac-toe menu because you can adapt it to anything! I hope you blog about the activities you try in this book once you get the chance to try them- I'd love to hear more!
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Karli
Creating a Thoughtful Classroom
Interesting! I've never heard of this book but it sounds really helpful for differentiation in SS (which is super hard when we don't have tons of time!) I like that they have so many ideas that are choice boards!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this! I will have to check it out!
Amanda
Collaboration Cuties
Always happy to see people finding my books useful - that was always the intent when they were written. If you start using any of the product and/or menus from the books and have questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail - my address is on the "About the Author" page. I am also happy to send along the word document templates I use to make the menus (I do present staff development on how to create menus and always provide the templates to make it easier/faster for teachers.) If you get to the point you would like to create your own and it will save you time, drop me an e-mail and I will send them along!
ReplyDelete