Social studies is about the world around us, from understanding our needs and wants, to recognizing what it means to be a good citizen, to knowing states and countries. Often, though, teachers struggle to find the time to teach social studies content in an environment that is so heavily focused on math and English language arts.
Quality social studies instruction has two large hurdles: time and resources. Whether you are struggling to fit social studies into your day-to-day routine because of a lack of time or a lack of resources, IXL can help. One simple way to incorporate social studies into your everyday instruction is to tie it into your reading blocks, and IXL has a variety of social studies skills that connect with language arts.
Here are a few types of IXL skills that would fit perfectly into a reading block.
Great social studies skills for reading blocks
Read along about holidays/famous people
IXL’s read along series of skills has students read high-quality nonfiction texts about celebrated figures like George Washington and holidays like Martin Luther King Jr. Day, then answer questions to practice their reading comprehension. These passages are well suited to early readers.
Region and country profiles
Many books that are common in ELA curricula take place in different parts of the world. Use IXL’s region and country profiles to give your students additional context for places like the Middle East, Europe, China, and Brazil. Knowing the history, cultures, and geography of a story’s setting can help bring it to life in readers’ minds.
Additionally, many of these profiles give students practice in analyzing and creating timelines, interpreting images, and using data to draw conclusions, all of which are cross-cutting skills with language arts.
Document source analysis
Source analysis skills challenge students to interpret key documents from U.S. history, such as the Declaration of Independence. Questions in these skills check learners’ comprehension of the text, as well as their ability to turn that information into deeper understanding. They’re a good way to develop students’ critical thinking skills while they learn about the past.
Using IXL Social Studies in reading blocks
There are three main ways to incorporate IXL Social Studies skills into your reading blocks:
Whole group
IXL Group Jams are an excellent tool for whole-group instruction. Group Jams enable an entire class to work on the same IXL question at the same time. They provide a great opportunity for whole-group instruction by simply displaying texts from IXL skills and then walking through the text and questions as a class. Teachers can either instruct and model for the whole group, or team students up and allow them to work together.
Small group
Similar to using IXL Group Jams for whole-group instruction, teachers can also benefit from using Group Jams as a form of small-group intervention. For instance, after a social studies topic has been covered in whole-group instruction, maybe the teacher notices that a handful of students are still struggling with the concept. The teacher can pull those specific students for intervention and start a Group Jam to have them work collaboratively on an IXL social studies skill that aligns to the objective for the day.
Station rotation
Teachers can assign an IXL Social Studies skill to students as part of a station rotation during a literacy block. For example, as students rotate around the room, students at one specific station would work on a particular skill that aligns with the social studies instruction and ELA instruction happening in the classroom. This approach allows the teacher to cover a social studies topic within a reading block without making it the central focus.
These are just a few examples of how you can incorporate IXL Social Studies into your reading blocks. Browse our social studies curriculum to see if you can find even more skills you can include in your ELA instruction.
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