In a Visual Discovery activity, students act as space shuttle astronauts who are returning to Earth and learn about geographic features of the globe as they get nearer and nearer to their landing site.

In a Social Studies Skill Builder, students use a map and compass rose to locate their community, identify directions, and measure distances to other places.

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students write and illustrate travel brochures for three communities in the United States based on physical features, climate, and natural resources.

In an Experiential Exercise, students explore the reasons why people immigrate, the challenges immigrants face in getting to the United States, and some of the benefits and drawbacks of being an immigrant.

In a Response Group activity, students explore cultural diversity by looking at the contributions of different cultures in the categories of food, languages, holidays, and traditions. Then they brainstorm lists of additional contributions.

In a Problem Solving Group activity, students create human monuments honoring the contributions of four individuals whose actions made a difference in the lives of people in their own community and around the country.

Why Teach This Lesson?

In a Writing for Understanding activity, pairs read about six children from communities around the world and study artifacts related to the children's daily lives. Then they complete Venn diagrams of the similarities and differences between their lives and those of the children they read about.

In an Experiential Exercise, students discover what happens to prices when supply and demand change. Then they predict what will happen to prices in hypothetical situations that affect supply or demand.

Why Teach This Lesson?

In an Experiential Exercise, students take on the roles of countries around the world and use a ball of yarn to create a trade web connecting all of the countries to one another.

In a Social Studies Skill Guilder, students work in pairs to analyze artifacts related to six public services and then read about the services. Then they vote on the services they think are most important and use two kinds of graphs to display the voting results.

In a Writing for Understanding activity, students read letters to city hall, choose the office best suited to deal with the issue raised in each letter, and write a short response. They then write a letter to a person in their own community government.

In a Visual Discovery activity, students use their acting skills to bring to life images of public meetings, peaceful demonstrations, support for candidates, and voting.

In a Response Group activity, small groups discuss solutions to three cases of communities faced with specific environmental problems. The groups then present their solutions to the class. Afterward, students find out what each community actually did to help solve the problem.

In a Problem Solving Groupwork activity, students design, present, and implement a class project to help the global community.