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Interesting Quote, Big Idea, and Connection provided from chapter 1 of “Making Connections in Elementary and Middle School Social Studies” by Andrew Johnson.
Making Connections in Elementary and Middle School Social Studies Chapter 1 Connections
Family Involvement
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Discuss how you will encourage family involvement in your classroom

Lesson Planning Strategies
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Using the Teacher's Edition:
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Referencing specifically the Houghton Mifflin Teacher Edition:
extension lessons. The resources provided in the teachers book when teaching their lesson or using them to supplement an individual lesson can help strength the connections to the materials, scaffold materials to the students in need, differentiate learning for students particular needs, and teach across the curriculum. Because many of the basic lesson resources like vocabulary, assessment rubrics, and noting misconceptions have already been discovered prior to teaching, the teacher can spend more time focusing on the delivery of the content that seeking out original content. The following list bulleted list that contained within each teacher edition. It is partly based on by Professor Powell:Powell and my personal experience.
Wide Margins: Writing individual notes and thoughts before and after teaching the specific lesson.
Unit Planner: Visual displays each lesson and extended lesson within a single unit.
Planning Guide: A written guide the explains to order in which to teach the lesson, how long each component should take and the resources needed.
Unit Opener and Big Idea: Suggestion on how to teach the overall unit and the Big Idea that all the lessons will connect to.
Assessment Resources:
Chapter Review and Test Prep pages: Allows the teacher to assist students in reviewing key concepts and be familiar with the questions to be asked in the assessment.
Assessment Options: A potential resource that includes questions that can be answered orally or written.
Suggested Reading found in the Bibliography:
Leveled Readers selected for each unit. Also, each unit has a book to address ELL students, on target learners, below target learners, and above target learners.
Teacher Read Alouds selected for each lesson and unit.
Each Lesson Contains the following teacher resources:
Chapter Preview: Includes objectives for the lesson, student friendly vocabulary, and listing potential misconceptions to be prepared to address.
Different Learner Support: Specific tasks or activities to differentiate learning for students that need ELL support, a challenge, or in need of extra support.
Cross-Curriculum Activities: Suggested activities that link the lesson with ELA, Math, or Science.
Extended Lesson: Each extended lesson is to specifically help students connect the ideas from the primary lesson to the Big Unit Idea or concept.
Skill Builder: Each lesson has a mapping lesson in which to provide students with the plethora of skills required to shape, create, use, inquiry, and observe information on a map.
Lesson Assessment Questions and Rubric: Each lesson contains a few assessment questions and a three point suggested rubric for grading student oral or written responses.
Using A Strategies from 25 Strategies for K-8 Inquiry-Based Learning: Integrating Language Arts and Social Studies:
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Using the Teacher's Edition:
Referencing specifically the Houghton Mifflin Teacher Edition:
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TheseReferencing specifically the Houghton Mifflin Teacher Edition:
The teacher editions for the above series of books havecontain many attributes that can assist whenresources for helping teaching from a textbook. Some attributes like the lessons within. The resources included suggested leveled reading, read alouds and hands on activites
can help stimulate engagementreader's theaters. They also make sure to provide suggested questions to motivate thinking prior to reading and motivation.discussion questions to assess comprehension. The resources within also included suggested activities, tasks and worksheets to demonstrate proficiency in the subject. Furthermore, there are unit planners and suggested unit assessments. My favorite part of the resources included the mini-lessons for re-teaching, specific suggestions for ELL students, and extension lessons. The following list bulleted list that better reflects the resources contained within based on a PowerPoint provided by Professor Powell:
Using A Strategies from 25 Strategies for K-8 Inquiry-Based Learning: Integrating Language Arts and Social Studies:
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Topic 1
13. Explain some ofUsing the key features of a social studies series teacher's edition.
Topic 2
17. ExplainTeacher's Edition:
Referencing specifically the Houghton Mifflin Teacher Edition:
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These teacher editions books have many attributes that can assist when teaching from a strategytextbook. Some attributes like the read alouds and hands on activites
can help stimulate engagement and motivation.
Using A Strategies from 25 and Social Studies.
Topic 3
19. ExplainStudies:
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You can purchase the advantagesabove book from Amazon.com: Amazon
In the Lesson Planning page, Lessons 3, Lesson 4, and the Unit Plan all included integrated strategies from the above book in the lesson. In my sample lesson for a third grade civics lesson, I chose to utilize the Strategy 15 from the book above. Strategy 15 suggests that students should be introduced to the concept of collaborating with othermultiple opinions and viewpoints. Although the primary activity strategy for this lesson was do a debate, the purpose was really to establish a pluralist approach to content. The strategy asks students to consider a school issue and their own personal feelings about it. Students are then asked to construct an alternative view point on the same issue. This is then followed by teaching students to use print and non-print resources to further develop their opinion and feelings. The strategy even goes so far to provide worksheet for students to track their research, feelings, and epiphanies. Then the teacher is to organize a basic debate over the issue so that students can listen to opposing views and reasoning.
Although the strategy called for teaching students the importance of multiple viewpoints, I thought the strategy best fit the C15.4.3 Identify sources of information people use to form an opinion standard I was trying to teach, because it incorporated using source information to develop opinions.
The book itself discusses how to scaffold this lesson for different grades and even provides a list of sample literature that could be read aloud before teaching the lesson. The lesson itself is generic enough that you could apply it to a multitude of different topics and students would still be able to develop the key point of developing a pluralist view point after establishing their own researched based opinion.
Advantages of Teacher Collaboration
Like lifting any heavy burden, the weight becomes lighter when there are more hands lifting. The same can apply to teacher collaboration. When teachers bringconsider that they will rarely be the only teachers in an elementary school teaching that particular grade and they all share the same standards, it would be a great benefit to yourtheir students
and each other to consider themselves resources for one another. Often, teachers hail from different profession and educational backgrounds which means they can provide unique ideas, resources, and perspectives on a content subject that an individual mind would have only considered one way. Additionally, when teacher's collaborate they can help negotiate duties and tools that best meet those teachers strengths. For example, a teacher with a high comfortable level teaching the economic strands could help a teacher that is struggling to teach that subject. Another benefit I learned particularly from this course is that a collaboration can often provide an additional level of motivation and result in learning new tools for communication. During a partner assignment, my partner and I were able to quickly accomplish our assigned lesson faster that I would have on my own, because I did not have to think of every idea on my own or heavily debate over my own choices. Additional, because we did not see one another face to face, we had to be through in our communication and find ways of detailing our thoughts about specific parts of our collaborative efforts. We both discovered new elements of existing programs that allowed us to do just that. Finally, teacher collaboration allows teachers to learn new strategies and techniques. As educators we tend to adopt certain behaviors and perferred teaching methods, but when we work with our peers we could be introduced to new effective and engaging strategies we've never tried before with the safety net of an expert to coach us through our first use.

Lesson Planning Strategies
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Topic 1