Social Studies?

...An inquiry-based approach to enhance literacy and critical thinking skills,

allowing students to approach inquiry through the 5Es:

Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, and Evaluate.

Choose your level!

Bell work

1. Fantasy Interview 

• choose a half sheet
• read  instructions displayed on the board.
• In the front of class is an empty chair and a few props to create a comfortable setting.
• "If you could spend 15 minutes with any person in the whole world discussing, questioning, and sharing,
• WHO would this be
• and why did you choose him or her?"
• Write or draw your responses
• If they choose, share them following the exercise.

2. Just 10 words

• Write or draw a ten-word story on a specific topic that you're learning,
• Write a ten-word story describing your strengths and expertise.
• Another option for those who don’t want to write is creating an infographic.

3. Predict an Outcome

• Choose a short video and watch the first minute.
• Following this one-minute presentation, you will predict two or three outcomes as to how this video will end.
• This can be related to subject matter that you're learning, or it could be a motivational video addressing social and emotional skillsets.

4. Beliefs Infomercial

• Using images, words, colors, or technology...
• Design an infomercial about a strong belief that you hold.
• It could be a longtime personal belief, one that you've developed through recent experiences, or one that you're beginning to question.

5. Meeting of the Minds

• Select characters from a book, historical figures, or any author, inventor, scientist, or individual whom you've been studying.
• Given a 21st-century challenge, how would these individuals solve it? What would their discussion look like, and how would they relate to one another?

6. Legibility Test

• With your opposite hand or blindfolded, 
• write a short review paragraph about a topic on the upcoming test or something that needs to be remembered.
• Then  trade papers with a classmate to see if s/he can read and understand what was written.

7. Happy New Year / Happy back to School

• choose a half sheet
• Write your wishes for the New Year
• trade your greeting cards

8. turn it up

• What is a song that puts you in a really good mood?

9. Obsolete?

• What do you consider to be really old technology?
• What is the BEST invention OF ALL TIME?

10. What is worth than gold?

11. the answer is...

• so, what was the question?!

12. Ok, hmmm...

• what is one thing that makes you wonder or think 'ok, hmmm'?

13. Draw your head

• fill it up with words...
• pictures
• ...showing on what's going on there

14. Thumbs Up Today!

• What is ONE thing that happened this week that was really good?

15. MARVELous

• If you could have any SUPER POWER
• what would it be and WHY?

16. Freaky Day!

• If you could trade live with someone
• for just a day
• WHO would it be? And Why?

17. Free Draw Challenge

18. Picture Perfect

• Where do you picture YOURSELF
• in 20 years from NOW?

19. UNplugged

• Where would you BE
• What would you DO
• if Wi-Fi NEVER EXISTED?

20. Feel FREE

• What OUTRAGES you?
• How do you feel about SUNDAYS?
• Write a haiku or a limerick; A short poem that best represents you.
• in the year 2050, a MOVIE is being made of YOUR life. PLease tell us the NAME of your movie and briefly SUMMARIZE the STORY LINE
• What do you HOPE to find OVER THE RAINBOW?
• You have 150 WORDS; Take a RISK.
• Give us your TPO 10 list
• You have just reached your 1 millionth hit on you Youtube video.  What is your video about?
• If you could choose to be raised by ROBOTS, KNIGHTS or DINOSAURS or ALIENS, what would you choose and WHY?
• Please describe a DAILY ROUTINE or TRADITION of yours that may seems ordinary to others but holds SPECIAL meaning for YOU. Why is this practice special for YOU?
• Make a bold PREDICTION about something in the year 2020 that no one else has made a bold prediction about.
• What invention would the world be BETTER OFF without and WHY?
• What does 'YOLO' mean to YOU?
• You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please SUBMIT the page 217
• Tell us the QUESTION you think a SELECTIVE COLLEGE should ask. How would you answer it?
• What is your favourite WORD? Why?
• ...

15 inspiring quotes

• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.” — Plutarch
  “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
  
  “Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.” — Malala Yousafzai
  
  “We are what we believe we are.” — C.S. Lewis
  
  “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” — Elie Wiesel
  
  “How wonderful it is that we need not wait a single moment before starting to change the world.” — Anne Frank
  
  “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
  
  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
  
  “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  
  “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” — Pablo Picasso
  
  “Dream big, work hard, stay humble.” — Brad Meltzer
  
  “If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.” — H.G. Wells
  
  “Everything you have in life can be taken from you except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. This is what determines the quality of the life we’ve lived — not whether we’ve been rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or suffering. What determines our quality of life is how we relate to these realities, what kind of meaning we assign them, what kind of attitude we cling to about them, what state of mind we allow them to trigger.” — Viktor Frankl
  
  “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau
  
  “Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.” — Rumi

Source: TED-Ed Blog / By Laura McClure on January 11, 2016 in TED-Ed Innovative Educators