Eighth-grade social studies can take many forms. Some districts emphasize civics, or the study of government. Others offer a separate course in American history. Still others combine the two and add a healthy sprinkling of geography. But, regardless of the content of your eighth grader's social studies course, he'll be making daily use of his reading, note-taking, and class-participation skills.
Just as with science, the social studies student who finds his course work appealing is likely to listen harder, read longer, and put more of himself into papers and projects. Happily, it's not too late to spark this kind of interest in your eighth grader. The following are some ideas to help you make social studies facts and figures more palatable—and related resources more available—to your resident teen-ager.
TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE SOCIAL STUDIES SKILLS
■ Post Barnes & Noble's The Junior Wallchart of History in your family room. This colorful chart enables a student to view simultaneous events in history.
■ An excellent reference book is Simon & Schuster's The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events (New York, 1982). This book traces major events in politics, philosophy, the arts, science, and technology from 5,000 B.C. to the present.
■ Help bring the past to life by renting videos whose stories center on famous periods of history. Cleopatra , Ben-Hur , and Gone With the Wind are a few examples. If your child likes to read, he may find historical novels equally helpful. While novels and films may not always be factually correct, they provide a colorful and informative look at the moods and customs of the times.
■ Your teen's room may be decorated with pop-star posters, but you can claim equal time by adorning the basement walls with Dale Seymour Publications' posters of past presidents, state flags, and famous United States documents (through catalogue only).
■ Provide your child with a small tape recorder to ease the listening demands of lectures and films. This device can also be used for constant playback of important facts and dates.
■ To stimulate your teen's interest in geography and culture, pick up one of Fodor's many guidebooks to other countries. Some of the more exotic titles are Hawaii , Australia , and Cruises and Ports of Call , all by Random House (New York).
■ Educational Insights' battery-operated Geo-Safari will help your teen sharpen his geography skills. Players select maps of various parts of the world, and press keys to identify countries, states, capitals, landmarks, oceans, and the like. A correct answer brings a musical salute.
■ Check out photo-essay books from your library. Many of these "coffee-table" books contain beautiful photographs of various peoples and places.
■ Stimulate your teen's interest in other cultures by planning a family outing to an ethnic neighborhood in a nearby city—New York's Chinatown, for example. After shopping, dining, and seeing the sights afforded by such a cultural center, you can rent a corresponding travel video to teach your teen even more about your "hosts'" heritage.
■ While a globe may be difficult to store in your home, an atlas serves the same purpose, and, in fact, provides much more detail. Atlases such as the Rand McNally Road Atlas: United States, Canada, and Mexico (New York, 1991) contain a host of fascinating facts and figures.