Where social studies and literacy meet

This week we are making a transition from the social studies text to the basal reader. The goal is to intentionally integrate the basal into our social studies block, and primarily focus on reading comprehension skills. While I think I can integrate those skills into the social studies text, I've struggled getting that going. Why? Largely because of the content we've been reading. The first section was laden with vocabulary, setting the stage for the chapters to come. Instead of thinking about reasons for migration, or tensions between colonies (etc), we were developing geography skills.

You might wonder where we're going next... We are going to launch the reader with the theme "Nature's Fury." The focus is on nature's impact on humans, using realistic fiction as the vehicle moving kids along. How I will mesh geography into this is through adding some articles on earthquakes (the first selection), and using our knowledge of maps to identify where earthquake faults are and how that relates to where people are located (we have started using population density maps a bit). We'll be working on predicting/inferring, as well as sequencing. I have high hopes...

On another note, I'm still in the beginning stages of getting a blog up and running for the classroom. But I do have designs on some wiki work- collaborative research, as well as some podcasting. It will all come together... hopefully sooner rather than later.