Social Studies Cooperative Learning Activities?

[mathguy_2332]

I am a first year 8th grade Social Studies teacher at a small inner city school in the Midwest. What resources, web sites or books exist for a teacher covering Jefferson's/Jackson's Presidency and Westward Expansion? Specifically, I am looking for any cooperative learning activities that may be available on these topics. My students have a short attention span and textbook activities seem to bore them. This is a long term subbing assignment so I have a lot of textbook activities to work with but I also want to have cooperative learning activities available as well. Currently, the current teacher seems to recommend that I cover the textbook materials by having the students silent read, take Cornell notes and other note-taking tools.

[Rockguykev]

While they are not cooperative for the most part I have a bunch of generic history assignments on my website at mrroughton.com that might help. They are all products so you'll still need to provide the information input but I've found it is much easier to get middle schools to read a textbook if they are doing so with the purpose of learning the material to create something rather than simple to "cover" it.

More specifically for Westward Expansion I've had students in group select a type of person who would be moving west and prepare a presentation on just that group specifically.

[christie]

I taught history to sixth graders. I don't know exactly what it is you're trying teach about each of these topics, but I have a lesson I created for the Louisiana Purchase using primary sources. It was definitely challenging for my sixth graders, but they liked it. Each group was given a different source so that each group had a different part of the story. I'd be happy to share, though I'm not sure as to the best way since I'm brand new here.