Thursday Throw Down: It's All Greek to Me

Today I'm linking up with one of my blogging buddy's Erin at I'm Lovin Lit to share how I used my interactive notebooks in Social Studies.

Some of you may know that I am new to teaching Social Studies this year.  My school has 17,  sixth grade teachers.  Everyone teaches one 80 minute ELA block and three sections of a core course (Math, Science, Social Studies).  One of the teams obviously cannot be a team of 3.  WOOHOOO! That's me this year.  I have to teach 80 minutes of ELA, 2 math classes, and one social studies class.  We teach Ancient Civilizations in 6th grade, so my smarties and I have been wandering around the middle east for a few months.  We did a huge project on Ancient Egypt in November.  You can read about it in 4 parts starting {HERE}.  Now I'm on to Ancient Greece.  We used our interactive social studies notebooks to review two important city states: Athens, and Greece.  I always find my lessons go better when my students use their notebooks.

After reading about Athens in our social studies book we created two pocket files.  I used templates from Erin's Interactive Foldables.  We wrote down information gathered based on the Essential Question:  What made Athens an important city-state?  We did the same for Sparta.  I also brought in resource books for my smarties to add extra information that they had found.

Another source that I used to make the lesson more interactive was a video from Horrible Histories:  It's called Wife Swap: Athens/Sparta.  The BBC does a great job of showing the differences between these two city-states.  Check it out below.  It is a MUST for anyone teaching Ancient Greece.  My sixth graders thought it was pretty hysterical.

When we return from our winter break we will be learning a little more about the people of Ancient Greece, mythology, and the Olympics.  I will also be beginning a review in ELA of Greek root words.

I would love to hear what others do to teach Ancient Civilizations.  Drop me a line and share your ideas!