Recently our school has made a commitment to wean ourselves from worksheets. The term worksheet in the current teaching world has a connotation equivalent to that of the word stupid in the 6 year old world…forbidden and that-which-we-do-not-speak-of. Just yesterday my kindergartener told me a classmate of his said the “S” word. When I told the hubs about it he assumed the “S” word meant dog poo, so I had to explain that the “S” word is actually the word stupid. And now I have thoroughly confused you.
So now worksheets are being replaced with foldables, graphic organizers, and other products created by the actual student. With Pintrest and teaching blogs galore it is easier than ever to find samples of these. And now I will share one I used for social studies!
The third grade mind is encased in a small bubble where the biggest problems in life consist of who took whose scissors and there not being any chocolate milk at lunch. The parameters of their world extend to their community and not much farther, so introducing national, state, and local government systems can be a challenge. One way I did this in my class was for them to use the target board graphic organizer. This allows students to visualize the different levels as not only tiered, but also within the same system. We did the national level as a class since it was the week of the election and were focusing on the presidency. Then I had students watch this BrainPop Jr. video at home to complete the state and local sections. They had to include facts about each branch in each section.
Now, go make some worksheets graphic organizers!
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