You Wouldn't Want to Be...Series for Must Read Social Studies Mentor Texts

This week we are linking up mentor texts for the subject of Social Studies!  This can be any topic or even a book you use in Language Arts but it's based around your Social Studies curriculum!!  We love to integrate!

But, even though we do love to integrate, and I do have some books I want to share about that, I decided to link up some books that I used that were a quick attention-getter for my students!  These are great books to use to introduce a new unit.  I know with summer coming, we'll be looking for books we may want to purchase for next year, and I would recommend some of these!

I love that these books highlight the hardships of these time periods, mainly because it is so interesting for the students.  The illustrations are very eye-catching and interesting for them, too.

(You can click on the pic and it will make it bigger so you can look closer)

From You Wouldn't Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus  (I used this to introduce our explorers unit!)

The box with the bug in it has a caption that reads: "ITCHY? Ask other sailors to help comb the lice from your hair."  Ugh, right?  My students flipped out but wanted to hear more!

This is from the same book.  The caption next to the cheese says: "CHEESE is very smelly and full of worms."  I won't even tell you what the other captions say about the food...blech!!!

This one came from the book You Wouldn't Want to be an American Pioneer.

The caption at the top right corner says: "Handy Hint- Trapped in the snow and starving? You will get a tiny amount of goodness by making a stew from your leather boot."  Yum, yum.

See, aren't these fun?!?  At the end of the books, they leave the reader with a question:
If you were given the chance again, would you really want to sail with Christopher Columbus?
Had you known the hardships you would face, would you still have wanted to be an American colonist?

So, I made a little sheet for students to be able to make their own "You Wouldn't Want to..." poster about what we are learning.  I would want them to pick something small to focus on.  Like, "You Wouldn't want to be a Soldier in the Continental Army" or "You wouldn't want to be a Native American when Columbus Landed".

Here is the sheet- you can download it if it's something you might try!

I wanted their poster to look like the illustrations in the book.  :O)

There are TONS of these "You Wouldn't want to" books...go check Amazon...I'm not kidding you!

And, I'm breaking my own rules here, but I have some books that you might consider for your classroom library.

These are called You Choose Books.  It's a story and the reader comes to a point in the book where they have to make a decision for the character.  I have the American Revolution book.  First you get to choose your character.  Your choices are the daughter of a militia captain, a young Connecticut patriot, or a loyalist. Then it tells you the page that your story starts on.  From there,  you have to make certain choices.  For example, contact a spy network or go find your father.  Then, for each choice, you have to go to a specific page.

I think these are great for independent readers but you could do it as a class read aloud and then have students predict what will happen on certain paths that the character takes and explain the cause/effect relationships throughout the book.

I have a certain difficult student in my class and he LOVES these books.  He has read most of them, and it gives him something to share about when we are discussing some of these events in Social Studies.  I definitely recommend these for your classroom library, if nothing else.

Phew, could I give you anything more to chew on???  I hope you aren't on overload already because I want you to be able to read all of the other wonderful mentor texts that are being linked up!!

(If you have never linked up before you can check HERE for more information.)

I CAN'T WAIT to see what Must Read Social Studies Mentor Texts you link up!  I'm super excited!!!!

Amanda

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For the Linky- Please make yourself a SANDWICH!  Please comment on the person who linked up before you and the person that linked up after you.  I know everyone puts in a lot of time and effort to these posts and I want everyone to feel the love!!!  (Haha, see, you're a sandwich...you know...because you are in the middle of the comments...do you get it?)  ;O)

Next week's topic- Language Arts (anything goes- reading, writing, or grammar!)