Hi, Friends! Today we are linking up with Carla from Comprehension Connection for her Thematic Thursday (even though we are a day late!), and this week's topic is Colonial America! Please click her button below to go check out all the awesome ideas that you can use in your classroom! There are so many! You will be set! :)
Here are some of our favorite books to use. We always start with reading about the lost colony of Roanoke- the kids get enthralled with the story! Then, we talk about Jamestown and Plymouth before moving into the 13 colonies.
The book, You Wouldn't Want to Be an American Colonist also grabs the students' attention. The whole series of You Wouldn't Want...books is fantastic! We actually did a Must Read Mentor Text post about this series of books. Click here to see how we used this series of books and make sure to download the freebie (the link to download is in that post)! The freebie is a poster for the students to make showing what they learned about why you wouldn't want to be an American colonist.
In addition to reading great texts about Colonial America, we also use nonfiction articles to teach our students everything they need to know. We created these articles because our text book didn't quite have the information we needed, and it wasn't written in a way that our students could understand. We paste the articles into our Social Studies notebooks and use the accompanying interactive notebook activities and flip books to take notes. We LOVE using the articles because they are written in kid friendly language, they promote great discussion, and our students can highlight and take notes right on them! It really keeps them engaged and helps them to understand the information better.
After we finish reading and discussing the articles together, the students answer the comprehension questions that follow each article. Sometimes we use these for morning work or homework, and they are great for assessment grades as well! The questions are an easy way to check for comprehension and review the students' learning. Just the click the pictures to check out the articles available in our TpT store.
We hope you found some helpful resources to use during your study of Colonial America! Have a great weekend!
Thank you so much for linking up this week. I love all of your lesson ideas. Do you have Colonial Day with your unit? Our kids always loved it. We set up activities in each classroom.
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