Social Studies Activities
Remote Teaching
When we first signed up to be teachers, we weren’t exactly trained or prepared to take on remote teaching. Although it’s become a “new normal” for many of us, it was unexpected and we had to adapt quickly. That being said, it’s important that we find ways to make teaching easier. Therefore, if you are a social studies teacher in need of teaching ideas for your distance learners, we’ve got you covered! Below is a list of 5 ways we have prepared social studies activities for distance learning. We’ve had success with these in our own classrooms and think you’ll benefit from using them, too!
Social Studies Lesson Plans
Document-Based Questions (DBQs): Distance learning is a great opportunity to incorporate DBQs with your students. We have found success with DBQ lessons by breaking down the number of documents over several days. For example, we will usually have students analyze no more than 2-4 documents each day. It can also be helpful to model the analysis process with your students, either over Zoom or a similar program, or through a pre-recorded video. You also can have your students complete a Google Form with multiple choice questions to assess their understanding and help you see how they understood the documents in an efficient way!
Virtual Museum Exhibit: We are definitely history nerds, but we can put our love of museums to good use with this creative activity! Museum exhibits can be helpful due to the way they organize information. They strategically pair artifacts, images, and texts with key pieces of information that are important for context. In this free activity, no matter which topic you are teaching about, students will create a collection of artifacts that highlight key aspects of that topic and discuss their importance. As an assessment, students will create a slideshow museum exhibit about the assigned topic. Each slide presents an artifact that they wish to include and helps them explain the significance. Get your free download here.
Video Lecturing: Before remote or hybrid teaching, you might have already been lecturing on a regular basis. While we do try to keep lecturing to a minimum, it can be one of the easiest ways to send your message to your students. Pre-recording video presentations and lectures is also a great way to keep everyone organized during remote teaching. Honestly, it’s kind of nice to know that you are covering the exact same information with each class and that no one is falling behind, and your voice doesn’t get as tired! We have personally used unlisted YouTube videos to share lessons with our students. It’s easy to upload and share, and students are already familiar with the platform.
EdPuzzle: If you haven’t used EdPuzzle before, we encourage you to try it out. EdPuzzle allows you to take a video, break it into pieces, and add questions in those pieces based on what that section of the video was about. It is simple to assess and grade, and you can ensure that students are getting what you want them to get out of the lesson. While you could definitely make videos for your classes yourself, there is already a lot of great content out there that can enrich your teaching.
Digital Design Activity: Many of our students are visual learners, so let’s celebrate that with creative design activities. One of our favorite options is for students to design an infographic about a relevant topic. Infographics are great because they incorporate both text and visuals that share information in engaging ways and can also be useful for assessment. Canva is one of our favorite design platforms and they have a lot of ready-made templates, including infographics. However, students will need to make a free account as an extra step before they begin on the assignment. You can also keep things simple and use a Google slideshow, setting the page dimensions to infographic size (or any other size of your choice). Allowing students to practice with digital tools like this will give them skills they can use in the future!
Social Studies Resources
Remote teaching can be a challenge, and we want to make it easier for all teachers. We have everything you need for five different activities in our epic FREE guide! It’s called “5 Creative Projects to Ignite Student Engagement in Your Social Studies Class”, and you get detailed teacher guides, along with printable and digital versions of the assignments. Grab your free copy here.
If you liked this list of 5 Social Studies Activities for Remote Teaching, consider watching the corresponding video here, and if you want to know more about us click here!
Are you looking for some new teaching ideas to engage your students in your social studies class? If so, you’ll love our FREE guide: 5 Creative Projects to Ignite Student Engagement in Your Social Studies Class. These activities have both printable and digital options and can work for any social studies subject!
