I'm hearing from social studies teachers across grade levels that the struggle with AI and students simply Googling answers is becoming more problematic. Some schools are limiting the availability of devices, or are encouraging more paper-pencil work.
I get it. Especially with the content taught in social studies, we want students to become critical thinkers, and AI makes that even more challenging.
So, I've decided to take three of my most popular geography-focused virtual field trips for World History and revamp them into station activities.
The content is similar to what you'll find within my virtual field trips, but the stations are designed so that students can work through the rotations in any order.
I've put these stations together so that you can literally just print and go! Just print the station materials (trimming is optional), and print and triple staple a copy of the response booklet for each of your students.
I've put these stations together in the same format as my US History station materials. At the time, I was juggling a lot of teaching content, so I needed a format for my classroom that made it really easy to implement without a lot of extra prep work. There is no cutting, gluing, or major assembly involved because busy teachers don't have time for that!
I've heard from many social studies teachers that they love this print-and-go station format. Not only is it a guided activity that keeps students focused, but teachers find that they can easily go between stations and have meaningful conversations with their students. So it only made sense to keep with this format for World History stations too.
I've set up the student response booklets with an introductory reading passage, followed by response questions for each of the stations your students will rotate through. This keeps things very simple for students because all their work is completed in one place.
I've included an easy-to-assemble station label for each rotation. The corresponding materials for each station are also labeled, and the questions on the response sheet correspond with each of the station materials. If it sounds confusing, don't worry it's all organized in one PDF that you just send to the printer.
All of the content covered within the station activities are standards-aligned and cover key geographic features.
For example, within the Geography of Ancient India Stations, your students will begin with an introductory reading passage. As your students rotate through five stations, they will learn about key geographic features of Ancient India. This activity includes stations focusing on map skills, the Ganges River and Hinduism, the Himalaya Mountains, Indus River, the Indian Ocean, and Monsoon Winds. These low-prep stations are a great way to add movement to your World History or Ancient Civilizations class while also focusing on critical thinking skills.
I've also included answer keys for all of the student response sheets to make grading easy. The student booklet includes a variety of response types. You'll find some short answer questions, fill-in-the-blank, and true/false statements.
Within the Ancient Greece Geography Stations, you'll find an introductory reading passage to build background information. This activity includes stations focusing on Mount Olympus, the Mediterranean Sea, the Peloponnese Peninsula, Sparta, Macedonia, and Athens.
Within the Ancient China Geography Stations, you'll find an introductory reading passage and then six stations focusing on map skills, the Gobi Desert, Himalaya Mountains, Tibetan Plateau, Yangtze River, and the Huang He (Yellow River).
Even though this resource is set up to be conducted as stations, you can also do this activity whole group. Print the student booklet, but instead of rotating through stations, project each of the station material pages from the PDF over your screen. Then discuss and work through the student response pages together. This is also a great option to meet the diverse needs of the classroom.
Find all of my station materials for both US and World History here.
Would you like to see more of my resources in a station format? Let me know at michellemcdonald9515@gmail.com
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