Social Studies Lapbooks!

I've had the flu most of break and haven't had a lot of time to leave the house. There are only so many shows you can watch on Hulu and Netflix in a given day. So after catching up on Castle and Revenge, I put my sick self to work! Last year, Ohio changed our Social Studies standards and I had a hard time finding what I needed for my students. Since our district was short on resources, I used a hodge podge of articles, notes, videos, etc. In the words of Tim Gunn, I had a make it work year.  So, this year, I took our standards and made lapbooks for Canada and South America. I wanted a generic notes sheet that could be used for any resource. I'm still working on a Mexico & Central America lapbook but for the rest of the weekend both lapbooks are only $2! Two for the price of one! Enter to win a copy on Instagram!

Here's a preview of the Canada lapbook:

Here's a preview of the South America lapbook:

Freebies are included in both previews - so check those out before purchasing! Please, leave some positive feedback if you purchase :)

Don't forget to check out other great Geography ideas and products over at Fifth in the Middle! 

Hope everyone is having a healthy, happy, and productive break! 

A Week of Thanks: H!

Today, I'm back linking up with the girls at Blog Hoppin' for their Week of Giving linky. H was hard to pin down. I love time at the holidays and I feel like school at times can be my home, however, if I'm keeping with a week of thanks... I couldn't make it through the year without...

I'm so lucky we have such great and supportive parents in our community. I know that it is a true blessing to have. Without our great parents and PTO, I know my time would not be as efficiently used. I've had parents help precheck my homework, grade spelling homework, make copies, hang bulletin boards, staple book orders, cut items for projects and plan class parties. They also donated breakfast for our Veteran's Day celebration and offer up some great "prizes" for our Lemonade Day! Plus, their kind words over the years have been true sanity savers. I can't thank them enough for all their help each year!

To my wonderful parents, thanks for everything!

Must Read Mentor Texts: A Walk In Text set...

Happy Sunday! This week starts our Spring Break and I can think of nothing better than starting off my weekend with some book recommendations! To share my Social Studies mentor texts, I'm linking up with Amanda and Stacia at Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Text Linky.

We're getting ready to start Canada in Social Studies. Before break, students worked on their Canada Word Walls and started getting glimpses of Canada. When we return from Spring Break, students will be studying three different regions of Canada and creating a Canada "passport" lapbook.

Of course, I went looking for Canadian picture books on the web to help out with our unit! There are few ABC books and a colleague of mine found Goodnight, Canada that we're going to turn into a class book. But there weren't many others... Since our main focus is geography in fifth grade, I found these gems on Amazon while doing some searching!

Each of the A Walk In books covers a different biome or landscape of North America. There are great maps and descriptions of each place! I wish I had these earlier in the year... My students have a hard time understanding places like "tundra" because many of them have never seen it. As a bonus, the books are very description and beautifully written.On Amazon, I found these used for $4 dollars each with free shipping! Yay!

Excerpt from A Walk in the Tundra...

I plan on using these books for supplemental research as we discuss each region and as students begin their research for their portion of the ABC books. I'm hoping these books really bring the geography aspect of our curriculum alive to students! I created a few cinquain geography poetry half sheets since it is National Poetry month! I figured these would be a good way to get students thinking about the information in a creative and fun way...

Do you use any geography mentor texts in your classroom?

Peek at my Week: Historical Fiction Reading & Canada!

Only one more week until Spring Break! 

Since break is rapidly approaching, we're going to be doing some wrapping up this week! We're ending our integrated (reading and social studies) Civil Rights unit this week. Our students having been reading historical fiction novels as well as studying the history of the Civil Rights movement. This week, we're moving on to historical fiction writing now that they're a wealth of knowledge on the time period.

Here's a few books that I'm going to use as mentor texts for our writing unit:

Titles include:

Freedom on the Menu, White Water, A Sweet Smell of Roses. 

A Taste of Colored Water and Freedom Summe.r

For social studies, we're moving into Canada! This is a new unit for our fifth teachers, so we've planned some fun activities and lessons that will helpfully teach our students some new information about our northern neighbors. As with all my units this year, I'm starting out with a word wall. I've added a copy to my drop box so feel free to grab a copy if you want some Canadian vocabulary! After the word wall we're going to be working on some maps of Canada and go on a Canada scavenger hunt this week...

 Don't forget to check out the other posts at Mrs. Laughin's Laughings linky Peek at My Week! I always get such great ideas from other great teachers' weekly "peeks."

What's your week look like??