It's Here...PebbleGo Next Social Studies For Grades 3-5 Research, Exploration and Fun!

One of my favorite places to send students and teachers to for their research needs, learning and personal exploration is PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next. Using these two databases in the library and through collaboration with teachers, PebbleGo helped us turn our students into researchers full of curiosity and a passion for exploration, learning and research.  

For those of you who haven't seen PebbleGo, let me give you a little background. 

Capstone started by creating PebbleGo.  It is the only database designed for preK-3 and now consists of 6 databases, including one in Spanish. One of the things I love most about PebbleGo is the read-aloud audio for every curriculum-connected articles and a selection of videos.  

A few years ago, Capstone introduced PebbleGo Next for older students in grades 3-6.  While it shares the read-aloud audio and easy visual navigation, it is clearly designed for older students with more detail and depth of information in the topics and articles included.  

And last week Capstone released the newest member of the PebbleGo databases!  

It is PebbleGo Next Social Studies and includes topics from examining world cultures, global issues, geography, technology, society, capitals and so much more.  It is going to make such an impact on our students, librarians and teachers as it fulfills not only research needs, but also has been designed around the curriculum and standards.

Let's take a closer look at the different topics within PebbleGo Next Social Studies.

The first is Culture which includes one of my favorite places to go in PebbleGo Next....Examining World Cultures.  

Within Examining World Cultures, students will be able to explore so many different topics around the world.  

As I looked around, the Food article caught my attention.  

We have been getting ready to kick off a Global Buncee Cookbook Project so this would be a perfect place to send our students as they research food around the world.  

You can read more about the Buncee project and how to get involved here.  

 You also find the topics of Economics, 

 Fields of Study, 

 Geography, 

 Technology and Society, 

 and The United States.  

 

Here is a detailed article list to show what you will find under each main topic area.  

Within each article, Capstone has included read-aloud audio, easy visual navigation, images and videos.

 At the top of the article, you will also find a Dictionary, Activity and Citation button.  

 You can look up words in the dictionary and even hear the pronunciation.

 When creating a citation of the article, APA, MLA and CMS can be selected....

and printed. I would even have my students just cut and paste....adding that to the end of a project or where appropriate.

 There are always a few Related Articles for each too.

My students always loved the educational games included in PebbleGo.  Capstone has included these in PebbleGo Next too.

These are located at the bottom of the page.  They just have to click on Games...

 and the four Social Studies Games pop up.

Hagan and I gave Social Studies Zoom a try.  It was really fun to guess the different images.

Another fun place for students to go and participate in is Question of the Day.  

After voting they can...

 even see what others have voted.

For librarians and teachers, the Teacher Resources are amazing!  These are located at the bottom of the page in the right hand corner.

In the Teacher Resources, you will find National Standards, 

Lesson Plans and lots of helpful Reproducibles including... 

 awesome PebbleGo Next Bookmarks,

 and a card which shows the Master Capstone Login information.

If you click on Resource Documents, you will also find the article document from above and a few more helpful documents.

As you see, PebbleGo Next Social Studies brings so many special things to your library, classrooms and most of all to your students.  It is the perfect next step in research and connecting to all of these social studies topics. 

And this year, I hope you give it a try as it becomes the perfect place for your students. 

You can find out more about PebbleGo Social Studies here.