[Teacherbee_4]

I will be teaching social studies to my class and the other class this year. Each class will meet for 30 minutes each day. On the first day we have social studies, besides making sure my expectations are hit, I'd like to do a fun/engaging interactive social studies lesson to get the students excited about social studies and wanting to come back. I'd only have 30 minutes, perhaps a little less with the other class since I'll need to go over expectations with them and won't have flexible time to finish up with that group (where as my group, I could go over or do it during another part of the day if we need more time).

Does anyone have any ideas of an activity I could do? It's fourth grade and we cover our state's history and United States Geography. I thought about maybe a breakout EDU/escape room dealing with the US, but that would take longer than 30 minutes and is hard to break up into 2 days. Any ideas? Thanks!

ETA: I should add that the teacher I am replacing left me multiple sets of a trivia board game for our state. (maybe 6-8 sets?) She might have left some US geography games, too, I can't remember if I saw those or not. I'm wondering if that would be a good idea or not. My concern is that they probably don't many of the answers since it is what we will be learning. On the one hand, it's a great way for them to preview what we are learning and seeing what they already know and what they don't but will, but on the other hand, if they aren't successful in it, it might not be that fun for them!

[iteachk2010]

Do you have access to technology?

Maybe prepare a flipgrid activity or make a Kahoot game to play.

[BBRocks124]

I always find students so lacking in basic map skills and it's a great place to start! They can design their own compass rose or map complete with everything a map needs - title, compass rose, key, index, etc... I let my students get familiar with atlases as well.

[Lynnteach2]

Create their own island with all the map skills like BBRocks said. My students loved that activity.

[Linda/OH]

We also have a shortened time for s.s. the first week or so. This could be done the first week but on the first day I just introduce our main topic for the year is Ohio. Then I ask them to list everything they already know on the first page of their interactive notebook. I throw out ideas such as write down any places you know or have visited, well known people, name of sports teams, cities, bordering states, landforms, etc. Their lists are usually pretty short. We end the year by doing the same thing and the list is much longer

[mom23kids]

Why don't you put up a United States Map and a World map. Ask the children where they were born or where their families are from. Then have a half index card taped to a string and put the string on the place they're from and the index card with their name on outside of map. Does that make sense?

[Teacherbee_4]

Wow! So many great ideas!

A couple of other questions:

*If I do a flipgrid, what question should I have them respond to or what should I have them record?

*For the map/island project, do you really think that can be done in 30 minutes, especially if you as say, they lack map skills? Do you have any resources on this?