These social studies webquests will bring the world into your classroom

Social studies webquests can be fun and compelling while also addressing curriculum standards. 

Read on to find out how. Specific webquests for geography and history are also shown below. Click on any image to go to a specific webquest (appropriate for 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade, and 10th grade).

Using the Internet to Meet Common Core Standards

The Common Core has placed a much greater emphasis on informational text in the classroom. You can use the websites of real-life organizations to bring relevant, real-world information to students. These can be a great source of nonfiction reading passages.

Textbook vs. Internet-Based Learning in Social Studies

First a look at the classic classroom texts: textbooks. Textbooks certainly serve a valid purpose, particularly in the way that they summarize and organize a whole subject in one volume. Textbooks are a great way to help a student understand an area of study by structuring information in a way that helps to make sense of it. The internet is not so great at this. It tends to be more scattered, more inconsistent, and the parts of it that are not specifically oriented toward K-12 education may present more reading and comprehension challenges than the content of a textbook.

And yet, the internet does offer some very special advantages for learning.

·         It’s timely.

·         It’s boundless.

·         It’s the source that students turn to in real life.

The internet provides access to myriad nonfiction reading passages that make great learning tools for social studies classrooms.

The challenge is to find ways to use the internet in ways that make the most out of the finite amount of time available in the classroom.  Doing that requires more than 1:1 device availability and internet connectivity. This is where structured lesson activities can corral the raw, endless information available online and funnel it towards a useful learning experience for the student.

Social Studies Webquests

Webquests are one really effective way to do this. Webquests are available in all subjects, made by everyone from pre-service teachers to educational resource publishers. They come in a variety of quality levels. Some are simple lists of questions that a student works through as they browse a single website. Others are higher-end learning experiences with quality graphics and multiple links to reputable sources.  If you’re looking for a way to increase the real-world relevance of your instruction and also use classroom technology to access more authentic informational texts, webquests are a great tool!

Feedback from Forward-Thinking Curriculum’s Teacher Fans:

·          “Nice resource and very easy to use!”

·         “My 6th grade students loved this assignment! It was captivatingly engaging! Great job!!!”

·         “Awesome! Nice resources and covers interesting and important topics.”

·         “Thank you for this! Very clear, well organized and visually appealing.”