Welcome to Madame Jarvis's Social Studies 8 course!
This webpage is intended to be a resource for other teachers
who are looking for examples of what they can do with their classes.
I have benefited from the generosity of others over the last few years.
Much of what I have created was collaborative from the get-go with others at
my school & a dear mentor from another district who was a FA for a long time.
Sharing what I have here is a way of paying it forward from when others have helped me.
I have given credit to my collaborators or sources of inspiration in each document,
and I hope you will continue to do the same.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or contributions, please email me
(jarvis_n at surreyschools dot ca) or send me a tweet! @nico1e on Twitter.
I rely a lot on the Pathways textbook for my grade 8 course. This keeps it simple. I approach each chunk of the textbook that I use with different critical analysis techniques & reading strategies, so the kids get exposed to a wide variety of sense-making approaches. I like this textbook for both regular social studies AND French Immersion social studies, because it has a solid reading level appropriate for grade 8s (not too easy, not too hard), comprehensive chapters & cool primary sources throughout.
Textbook: Pathways: Civilizations Through Time, 2nd Edition, Pearson Publishing
In French: Les Sentiers de la Civilisation, 2e édition, Éditions Chenelière
*Apologies - much of it what I post here will still be in be French for the time being. If you need to translate anything I recommend using the website Deepl *not* google translate. I do teach Socials in both languages but I haven’t organized it well enough to have both languages side by side in my website yet.
Textbook: Pathways: Civilizations Through Time, 2nd Edition, Pearson Publishing
In French: Les Sentiers de la Civilisation, 2e édition, Éditions Chenelière
*Apologies - much of it what I post here will still be in be French for the time being. If you need to translate anything I recommend using the website Deepl *not* google translate. I do teach Socials in both languages but I haven’t organized it well enough to have both languages side by side in my website yet.
Other recommended texts:
- B.C. Nelson Socials 8 (Currently undergoing translation into French)
- The Big Six
- Teaching About Historical Thinking
- Dive into Inquiry - Trevor Mackenzie & Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt
- Standards-Based Learning in Action - Tom Schimmer
- Grading from the Inside Out - Tom Schimmer
- The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2) Historical Thinking Videos
- The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2)
- Middle Years - Leyton Schnellert
Other helpful B.C. Socials Studies or Humanities teachers' blogs:
- Chris Moon's Social Studies at Van Tech Secondary - Flex Humanities 8
-
- Chris Moon's Social Studies at Van Tech Secondary - Flex Humanities 8
-
COVID-SPECIFIC EDIT:
If anyone would like to have students make a time capsule, it's a cool assignment for blended learning. I think it would be good for kids to know there is other stuff going on in the world. It could bring a sense of balance. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f3HmD5AWEDaSxSQFwEs6vm0-PyJkl4WF0uom_tnvFg0/edit?usp=sharing
Local Archives are also collecting primary sources. If students would like to contribute to the story of history, contact your local municipal archivists.
The ‘story’ that guides my grade 8 course starts with primary source analysis (they’re detectives) to learn processes & skills to analyse objects / artifacts from my own past (this is how they get to know me, it’s also a diagnostic unit). I use a whole bunch of ziplock bags full of objects from my childhood and studies / travels in Europe (Train tickets, maps, brochures, objects, etc.)
Then we move to Primary vs. Secondary sources.
We do a fun activity with Elvis, do half where they move around the room (windows for primary source, to the door for secondary) and then put your head down and raise your hand etc. to show whether they think various types of sources are primary or secondary.
• In English
• In French
closed / open questions (Using a Transformers' Analogy)
Students present their inquiry projects in stations. It will take a whole week but it's worth it. Get 3-5 different students to present each day over the course of a week. Each kid gets to present 3-5 times, as groups circulate around. It will be a little messy because each kid inevitably takes more or less time to present, but that's ok. Draw a circle on the board so kids know which station they have to go to after their first presentation.
Rationale: Students in the audience groups listen more attentively, and the students presenting have less stage fright. They also get to present multiple times which means they will learn from mistakes and improve each time.
Audience members ALWAYS have to fill out a critical analysis sheet while they listen and watch a presentation (Click here for the observation sheets in French) - I can use this for formative assessment.
Vikings Inquiry Project
Project Description & Choice Categories: Click here for the project description in French
**Students MUST use primary sources in their project to show how they inferred information about the past from Primary sources.
Process Check-ins and Reflection Sheets: Click here for both English and French versions
The next unit is on feudalism (skill = evidence & interpretation + Intro to significance) involving a film study (a knight’s tale) textbook reading strategies with Pathways, and the application performance task is to apply the critical analysis skills to the Japanese feudal system (using some YouTube videos + pathways
Then we shift to the Fertile Crescent, history of the Islamic civilization (again I am teaching reading strategies here so they do a group placemat with the chapter about the birthplace of a civilization in groups, then a SMART reading about Islam from the pathways text). The placemat activity I do for the birthplace of civilization pre-Islam & crusades is an idea i got from randomly seeing a teacher share what a Frayer Model is on Twitter the day before. I didn’t even know about placemats as a strategy until then, let alone Frayer Models . The stuff I do in this mini-unit probably also reinforces evidence& interpretation, and significance, while building context & background useful for perspective work. (I do more emphasis on Evidence & Interpretation in grade 9)
Then the class learns about the crusades (I do a multi sensory lesson where they read applying a different strategy and then they get to taste and smell some things that the crusaders brought back to Europe / stole) this becomes kind of a memorable element of cause and consequence for the kids. The performance task for that unit is perspective analysis / primary source analysis. They pick a quote or an image and they have to explain it, argue which perspective it’s from (European or Middle Eastern? Catholic or Muslim?) and justify their stance, and explain what a modern scholar could infer from the quote.
Then we do the Plague (reading strategies in Pathways again, new approach - guided notes & historical thinking) We do a lot of KWL sheets with videos from YouTube too, often before reading because it helps the weaker readers connect with sensemaking of the text. The historical thinking concepts I focus on with the plague are cause and consequence. We do a game simulation of the plague that a teacher in California made, and then we do a brainstorm of cause and consequence and then the kids pick a cause and a consequence to argue in a baby essay, which I scaffold by essentially letting them borrow a lot of an example baby essay about C&C from the crusades.
Then we launch into primary source analysis inferencing about continuity & change during the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. That’s a stations activity. It’s a little Eurocentric unfortunately but I feel very proud otherwise!
Then we move to Primary vs. Secondary sources.
We do a fun activity with Elvis, do half where they move around the room (windows for primary source, to the door for secondary) and then put your head down and raise your hand etc. to show whether they think various types of sources are primary or secondary.
• In English
• In French
closed / open questions (Using a Transformers' Analogy)
- In English
- In French
Students present their inquiry projects in stations. It will take a whole week but it's worth it. Get 3-5 different students to present each day over the course of a week. Each kid gets to present 3-5 times, as groups circulate around. It will be a little messy because each kid inevitably takes more or less time to present, but that's ok. Draw a circle on the board so kids know which station they have to go to after their first presentation.
Rationale: Students in the audience groups listen more attentively, and the students presenting have less stage fright. They also get to present multiple times which means they will learn from mistakes and improve each time.
Audience members ALWAYS have to fill out a critical analysis sheet while they listen and watch a presentation (Click here for the observation sheets in French) - I can use this for formative assessment.
Vikings Inquiry Project
Project Description & Choice Categories: Click here for the project description in French
**Students MUST use primary sources in their project to show how they inferred information about the past from Primary sources.
Process Check-ins and Reflection Sheets: Click here for both English and French versions
The next unit is on feudalism (skill = evidence & interpretation + Intro to significance) involving a film study (a knight’s tale) textbook reading strategies with Pathways, and the application performance task is to apply the critical analysis skills to the Japanese feudal system (using some YouTube videos + pathways
Then we shift to the Fertile Crescent, history of the Islamic civilization (again I am teaching reading strategies here so they do a group placemat with the chapter about the birthplace of a civilization in groups, then a SMART reading about Islam from the pathways text). The placemat activity I do for the birthplace of civilization pre-Islam & crusades is an idea i got from randomly seeing a teacher share what a Frayer Model is on Twitter the day before. I didn’t even know about placemats as a strategy until then, let alone Frayer Models . The stuff I do in this mini-unit probably also reinforces evidence& interpretation, and significance, while building context & background useful for perspective work. (I do more emphasis on Evidence & Interpretation in grade 9)
Then the class learns about the crusades (I do a multi sensory lesson where they read applying a different strategy and then they get to taste and smell some things that the crusaders brought back to Europe / stole) this becomes kind of a memorable element of cause and consequence for the kids. The performance task for that unit is perspective analysis / primary source analysis. They pick a quote or an image and they have to explain it, argue which perspective it’s from (European or Middle Eastern? Catholic or Muslim?) and justify their stance, and explain what a modern scholar could infer from the quote.
Then we do the Plague (reading strategies in Pathways again, new approach - guided notes & historical thinking) We do a lot of KWL sheets with videos from YouTube too, often before reading because it helps the weaker readers connect with sensemaking of the text. The historical thinking concepts I focus on with the plague are cause and consequence. We do a game simulation of the plague that a teacher in California made, and then we do a brainstorm of cause and consequence and then the kids pick a cause and a consequence to argue in a baby essay, which I scaffold by essentially letting them borrow a lot of an example baby essay about C&C from the crusades.
Then we launch into primary source analysis inferencing about continuity & change during the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. That’s a stations activity. It’s a little Eurocentric unfortunately but I feel very proud otherwise!
Key documents:
Course Rubric / Portfolio Rubric / Learning Map Click here for the English Rubric
Inquiry Project Reflection sheets Click here for both English and French versions
Course Rubric / Portfolio Rubric / Learning Map Click here for the English Rubric
Inquiry Project Reflection sheets Click here for both English and French versions