Thinking Nation Best Practice Repository

An A-Z review is a creative and structured way to help students review and reinforce key concepts, terms, or events from a unit of study.

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An Anticipation Guide is a teaching strategy designed to engage students and active prior knowledge before they dive into new content.

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Document analysis is a cornerstone of social studies education, offering numerous benefits that enhance students' skills and learning.

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Predicting allows students to engage in critical thinking and processing. This step before the "Do First" ensures students take guesses using key information, pictures, and texts. 

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The Write and Draw strategy is an engaging, student-centered approach often used in social studies classrooms to help students process information.

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The duo grouping strategy ensures that every student has an equal chance of working with different classmates, fostering a sense of inclusion. 

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Formatives assessments are a powerful way to measure how your students are progressing towards identified learning objectives (Additional Video).

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The Four Corners Activity is an interactive teaching strategy that gets students up and moving, thinking, analyzing, and collaborating. 

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The Frayer Model is highly effective for teaching vocabulary in a social studies classroom because it goes beyond simple memorization.

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A gallery walk is an activity where students move around the classroom, engaging with various displays of information, artifacts, or student work

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The "Give One, Get One" activity is a collaborative classroom strategy that fosters idea sharing, peer learning, and critical thinking.

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Graphic organizers are visual tools that help support students to structure, analyze, and understand information (Additional Video).

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The Inside/Outside Circle strategy promotes interactive learning fostering engagement, movement, and collaborative thinking.

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The jigsaw strategy is an effective cooperative learning technique that promotes collaboration, critical thinking, and deeper understanding.

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Memes can transform learning into a dynamic and culturally relevant learning experience for students.

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Notetaking is a crucial skill that helps students organize, retain, and understand complex information.

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The pair-share strategy is an effective way to engage students actively in the social studies classroom.

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A personal narrative is a form of writing that tells a story from the writer’s own life, allowing for deep self-expression.

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The Quick Write strategy is an instructional method used to engage students in short, focused writing tasks to support thinking and class discussions of new material. 

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The rainbow highlighting strategy uses a color-coded system to help students in highlighting text-based evidence in complex reading material. 

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"Say it in Six" is a teaching strategy where students are asked to summarize a concept, idea, or story using only six words. Great for getting students to think!

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The Silent Discussion is a structure and strategy that is effective in promoting critical thinking, written communication skills, and meaningful reflection.

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Socratic Seminars are a form of student-centered discussion that promotes critical thinking, collaboration, and deep exploration of ideas. Learn more by watching. 

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The inquiry journal is used throughout the lessons provided by Thinking Nation and encourages critical thinking, reflection, and questions. 

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Timelines are storytelling tools that bring history to life and help students see the connections between events, issues, and ideas.

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This Triangle, Square, Circle strategy is used by Thinking Nation to help students process new information during the closing minutes of class. 

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This "What do I do next?" method will help you proactively address this issue of early finishers and classroom management in social studies. 

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