Our Illustrated Encyclopedia of SS Terms

My original intent of tapping into home knowledge in order to foster connections between our curriculum and home information was met with this project along with far-reaching, additional, positive impacts that I had not anticipated. When I introduced the idea of the project at the beginning of the school year, I asked students to be mindful throughout their days (both at school and outside of school) of connections they noticed between our Social Studies content and their worlds. Whenever these connections occurred, students reported them to me, and I took notes.

In March, as we began reviewing all we had learned throughout the course of the school year, I reminded students of the book we were making and again asked for connections between school and homelife. Students who hadn’t already reported connections began bringing them to the classes’ attention. I even had a student from another class altogether bring a written connection to me because she had learned of the project from other students!

Specifically, I asked the students to identity a word (or words) from Social Studies that resonated with them. As students brought up connections, I was impressed with the commonality of their choices; many of them chose family and culture, for example. We were able to point out that these shared terms, identified by children across all demographic groups within our school, are important to many of us, despite our differences. In other words, we identified the common core of human kind, which fostered classroom harmony, understanding, and empathy for the group at large.

Click below to see the PDF version of the book the Coile Serves created.