History of the United States of America
12:59 PM
I've been told numerous times that you need to find your niche for TpT. Trying to do ALL subjects for ALL grades is just NOT the way to go. I whole-heartily agree.
How do you find your niche? Good question. It took me a couple years to figure it out. For me, it's creating cross-curricular units using science and social studies as the core. In fact, I found this out when a friend of mine asked if I could create a few reading passages for her class that would give the information to meet the social studies standards using reading strategies. My favorite options are text evidence based questions.
When I was a teacher, I had various groups of EL students come through my doors. I found that I needed to combine subjects to get it all in ... but let's be real, covering EVERYTHING you need to cover in a day is a pipe-dream. I also found that most kids could tell you what they THINK the passages said, but couldn't prove their thoughts. I ended up making an EL unit to help with writing to a prompt. I believe this is a resource that is severely lacking within schools.
However, while I LOVE my little language learners, this wasn't QUITE what made my heart happy. I DID love writing passages, so I went from there.
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| All About South America |
I took these experiences into account when I began making these passages. Honestly, I wrote 3-4 passages about 3 years ago and vowed I would NEVER do this again, because they took so much time. Ha. Never say "never." I ended up focusing on the 7 continents and the standards that TN teachers were facing. I came at it from a text evidence, writing, and interactive notebook direction. I couldn't believe I completed pretty legit sets for each continent for 3rd grade reading. Hmm ...
So, here I went again. Back in 2016, I started again. This time, I chose to focus on social studies standards for 4th grade, based around U.S. History. My inspiring friend obviously got all of the passages for free, as she was the inspiration. I also added technology, writing, role playing, and interactive notebook pieces. This is where my heart has been for the last year+.
These are the sets that are completed as of now. I've just started working on the Westward Expansion (hoping to finish it by the end of February!)
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| Settling the Colonies |
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| The Age of Exploration |
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| Land & People Before European Exploration |
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| Creating a New Government |
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| The War for Independence |
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| The American Revolution |
This is my niche. I found a need and something I enjoy doing. When you combine those two elements, you have the makings of a GREAT store!
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