Fantastic Scholastic Makes Social Studies Fanatics

My Students

I don't remember much from Social Studies. That's likely because like many students, we remember the dates and facts we need to in order to pass the test or quiz, but have little-to-no recall of the data because it seems irrelevant. Scholastic News helps make Social Studies fun and relevant.

Our school is a K-6 public school with over 90% of its population at or below the poverty level.

These students are wonderful. They have a strong desire to learn, but unfortunately, due to limited resources in our school and its community, the access to the materials that would boost their learning is limited. Many have not experienced life outside of the neighborhood and have a hard time making text-to-self and text-to-world connections.

My Project

Scholastic News is a weekly publication that has current events and topics written in a manner that is interesting to children. Some of the articles are even written by children! The stories are engaging. They are aligned to the Common Core standards which means the text is academically rigorous and ensures students are learning. There are numerous resources available online that can be paired with the reading to further engage the students and enhance learning. There's even an assessment piece. Each issue contains a variety of articles which allows for differentiated instruction.

We used Scholastic News in the past and our Social Studies grades soared.

Students just weren't connecting to the traditional Social Studies text/curriculum! For the first time in years, they were engaged and eager to get a new issue each week. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts in our District, we were unable to renew our subscription. Our students are devastated! They don't want to go back to using the textbooks. They want relevant topics. They're Social Studies Fanatics with Scholastic!