Graphic organizers in Social Studies

Graphic organizers are a great way to get student thinking about the things that they have been working on or have experienced. They can also use it to help them organize their thoughts, it is also visually pleasing and hands on. This is a graphic organizer I did after we got back from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The teacher can give the students directions on what to write about in each flap and they can draw and make it their own.

Geographic Garble

Geographic garble is a fun way to get students thinking about a subject by making them get involved and start their natural curiosity. Our class had a lot of fun with this activity. We broke into 3 groups and we each chose a state and we had to draw a geographic gable for 4 cities in the state that we chose. This made us do some research and make ourselves more aquatinted with our state. Then after we finished with that we drew our garbles on the board and the other students had to figure out what city it was by the picture that we had drawn. After we did the garbles our teacher gave us a few minutes to fill in as many states as we knew and then we counted them to see who had the most. Finally she had us finish writing in the names of all the states then color in all of the states that we have been to or traveled through. I think that this is a great way to get the students engaged and get their brains in the process of thinking about the up coming lesson. :)