US History Geography Back to School Project | 6 Degrees of Separation PBL

Jumpstart your school year with this high-interest, yet rigorous authentic project!

Empower your students to play scientist and traveler in this 1-week PBL inspired by Stanley Milgram’s theory of 6 Degrees of Separation and everybody’s grade-school favorite “Flat Stanley."

The ultimate field trip and no permission slips necessary!

This is the perfect project to kick-off a US Geography Test Series component to your US History course. This kit comes in both print PDF and digital for Google Slides.

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Greatness is trusting the kindness of strangers and seeing the abstract world as real.

After learning about the theory, students pick the one place they want to visit the most in the U.S. and through the power of a postage stamp and a little written persuasion they will get the ultimate “selfie."

This engaging plug-and-play project maintains high critical thinking and writing through news article analyzing, text annotating, and a mix of persuasive and explanatory writing with an authentic task and audience.

This project is how I kick off the year with my U.S. history students, but it would work equally as well as an end-of-the-year project, or in a geography or sociology class.

This project can be done well in about a week.

Included in this complete project:

Teacher Materials

• Project overview & daily lesson plans
• PowerPoint with images and student directions

Student Materials & Activities

• Project Planning sheet to guide one step at a time through the project-
• News Article Analysis to gain background info and practice annotating skills with two news articles
• Sample Photo & Flow Chart to visually display the theory and a completed project
• Letter Template & Rubrics to support students in writing strong letters
• 4 Cut-Outs to choose from or draw from scratch!
• BONUS Skill Sheet Annotating a Text

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Want to make it into a whole semester-long geography unit?

• US Political Geography Map Test Kit: 50 States & Cities
• US Physical Geography Map Test Lit: Water & Landforms
• US Geography Test Bundle: get both for a discounted price!

Want more U.S. History PBL Units?

• 1600-1800s American Values: explore the founders of America, from the Puritans to the Nez Perce, and their core values in order to develop one’s own goal and motivational plan of action for the school year
• 1900s American Immigration: explore the American story of diversity and hard work through the words and statistics of immigrants, Ellis Island to Angel Island, to create and preserve an oral history of their own
• 1900s Protest Movements: be inspired by Silent Sentinels to Alcatraz Occupiers to develop one’s own statement of protest or support
• 1900s American Heroes: explore what it means to be a hero from Madam CJ Walker to John Glenn in order to nominate one’s own hero for recognition

What to go entirely PBL?

U.S. History PBL Course Bundle: get this growing PBL course in one download and save big!

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This listing is for one license for regular, non-commercial classroom use by a single teacher only. Commercial use like online teaching (ex. Outschool) or sharing with other teachers (ex. shared drive, in a Facebook group, in a professional development training) is strictly prohibited.

By purchasing a license to this resource, you have access to all future updates at no cost, available under “My Purchases." Multiple and transferable licenses are available for purchase. PDF files are uneditable, other files have editing abilities, unless otherwise stated. All files are protected under federal copyright laws.

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