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IMPACT in the Classroom

Make Every Moment Count

IMPACT Social Studies empowers your students to reflect on the past and impact the future by providing a flexible, accessible, blended learning experience. Customizable lessons and robust supports ensure you can teach social studies in the time you have while confidently meeting the needs of every learner in your classroom.

Lesson Model

Following a three-step lesson model—Engage, Investigate, and Report and Take Action—IMPACT embeds inquiry in every moment of instruction. Each step scaffolds the inquiry arc laid out by the C3 Framework, making it easy to implement in your classroom.

Engage

Launch the inquiry journey by introducing students to the Chapter Essential Question and Inquiry Project. Students receive plentiful opportunities to build knowledge, ask questions, and share ideas—keeping them immersed in a productive cycle of learning.

A spread from the textbook outlines the Chapter 1 Essential Question and Inquiry Project. 

Investigate

Spark investigations of social studies content with the Research Companion—the primary collection of informational texts that deepens students’ understanding of history, geography, economics, and civics. Students read, investigate, and analyze primary and secondary sources; explore facts and figures; read texts from multiple perspectives; and more to encourage critical thinking and inspire deeper questions.

A spread from the Research Companion shows a text about landforms and communities. 

Report and Take Action

Students wrap up their investigations with thinking, writing, and discussion prompts in the Inquiry Journal. As they demonstrate their understanding of the chapter content and vocabulary, they show how they’ve grown as problem solvers, critical thinkers, and citizens in action.

A spread from the Inquiry Journal shows a sample of student discussion and writing prompts. 

Flexible Pacing Options

Make the most of the time you have for social studies with IMPACT’s flexible pacing options. Providing a streamlined, inquiry-based path for every chapter, our pacing guides ensure coverage of the essential standards and skills through an array of rich tools and content sources. Teachers with more time on their hands can customize the pathway to fit their schedule with additional recommended resources and activities.

The flexible pacing guides break down the different resources and customization options for Chapter 1. 

Fun, Engaging Activities

Each IMPACT lesson is yours to customize with engaging games, videos, projects, interactives, and more.

Kahoot!

Gamify your classroom with engaging, ready-to-play learning content for social studies. Whether you are testing knowledge with quizzes, puzzles, and True/False questions or collecting classroom opinions with polls and drop pins, Kahoot! and IMPACT Social Studies can help unlock your students' learning potential.

A laptop, tablet, and phone show Kahoot! quiz questions on the screen. 
A spread from the book shows a checklist of tasks to complete, 
share, and reflect on the Chapter Inquiry Project. 

Inquiry Project

With the Chapter Inquiry Project, students collaborate and think critically to answer the chapter's Essential Question. Additionally, the Inquiry Project allows students to demonstrate their content knowledge creatively—driving deeper engagement, curiosity, and agency over their work.

Program-Wide Features

Empower Every Learner

Ensure your learners have the support they need to grow into historians, geographers, economists, and active world citizens with differentiated scaffolds, leveled readers, and robust ELL supports.

Differentiated Scaffolds

Embedded scaffolds help students bridge knowledge gaps as they encounter challenging vocabulary and text structures, such as passive voice and archaic language.

Two overlapping spreads from the textbook—one breaking down the Chapter Inquiry Project 
and one with a sample of English Learner scaffolds. 
An excerpt from an Explorer Magazine comic on marine biology. 

A fresh take on leveled readers

Meet every student where they are with texts targeted to their Lexile level. IMPACT Explorer Magazine allows students to explore each chapter’s key ideas through content written at a variety of grade-appropriate reading levels.

Language Learner Supports

By focusing on language development, IMPACT ensures all students can participate and engage in meaningful social studies discussions.

Discourse

Talk About It activities and other discussion prompts encourage students to express their understanding and ideas, ask clarifying questions, use examples, and recognize how language can be used to express bias and influence others. These collaborative conversations are grounded in the Common Core ELA: Speaking & Listening standards.

A page with reflection prompts for the Chapter Inquiry Project. 

Cross-Cultural Connections

Encourage your students to think like world citizens with fun facts that connect to class content and discussion prompts that inspire critical thinking. By examining different cultures, both past and present, students build a more nuanced perspective on the world around them.

A sample cross-cultural connection on the Creek Indians of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Leveled Support

Help students access course content while practicing English language structures with strategies tailored to three different proficiency levels—Entering & Emerging, Developing & Expanding, and Bridging & Reaching.

A sample of three leveled prompts teachers can assign to students 
on a reading about Detroit and Kuala Lumpur. 

Language Forms & Conventions

Access helpful frameworks for explaining relevant grammar structures, words, and phrases. IMPACT also suggests collaborative activities for students to practice the language form and offers additional language transfer tips for Spanish speakers.

A chart of singular nouns and their plural forms with guidance on 
how to teach these forms to English learners. 

Spanish Cognates

Foster connections between Spanish and English words by pointing out relevant cognates from the chapter’s informational texts.

Spanish Cognates inset

IMPACTO

Support your Spanish-speaking students with this full-Spanish version of the core English program.

Various digital and print resources from IMPACTO Estudios Sociales. 

Cross-Curricular Connections

Maximize your instructional time by showing your students how social studies connects to everything around them. Cross-curricular connections enhance understanding of societal structures and global perspectives and empower young learners to make meaningful associations in math, science, and ELA.

A sample of the Make Connections! feature highlighting connections to math and science. 

Literacy skills provide the foundation for inquiry. Students apply literacy tools—like strategies for close reading, writing, and speaking and listening—to comprehend, critique, and synthesize social studies content.

Students read, write, and investigate for a purpose as they analyze primary and secondary sources; explore facts and figures; form connections to art and literary texts; and work with an array of texts written from different perspectives around an issue, problem, or question. Additionally, daily instruction is enhanced through text-based discussions, collaborative presentations, debates, games, and questioning.

IMPACT’s robust literacy resources include:

  • Close reading
  • Writing prompts
  • Reader’s Theater
  • Connect Through Literature
  • Explorer Magazine articles
  • Connect to Reading Wonders
  • Foldables®

The Make Connections! feature in every chapter allows teachers to make the most of their instructional time and provide a more holistic understanding of our world with suggested activities that connect to math and science. For example, students might connect science to geography by researching the weather patterns and wildlife in a specific region or connect math to economics by exploring currency around the world.

Measure What Your
Students Know

Frequent and measurable assessment is the cornerstone of effective teaching. IMPACT's data-driven, real-time information helps teachers make sound teaching decisions on the spot and across the school year. Each assessment is informed by state standards to help all students prepare for their futures in college, career, and civic life.

A list of assessment options for Chapter 4 next to a laptop displaying test questions.
A list of Quick Check questions to ask students before beginning a chapter.

Measure students' content knowledge before you begin a new chapter with this optional pre-test.

An explanation of the Stop and Check from the Teacher’s Edition.

Use the Stop and Check questions to prompt student discussion and monitor their comprehension of the core lesson content.

An explanation of the Check for Success from the Teacher’s Edition.

Use this formative assessment tool to gauge how well your students understand the material they are learning. Each Check for Success offers an activity that you can use to differentiate instruction for students in need.

An explanation of Report Your Findings from the Teacher’s Edition.

Located in the Inquiry Journal for every lesson, Report Your Findings measures student understanding of the lesson content and their ability to express their understanding.

An explanation of the print and digital Lesson Assessment from the Teacher’s Edition.

Monitor students’ understanding of the lesson content with the Lesson Assessment. Teachers are free to customize online tests or access the tools to create their own and track student progress. Printable Lesson Tests are also available for in-class use.

An overview of the Chapter Assessment options from the Teacher’s Edition.

Monitor student understanding of core chapter content with one or more of the following assessment options.

  • Connections in Action: Evaluate student understanding of core chapter content through discussion in the Research Companion.
  • Inquiry Project: Encourage curiosity and deep thinking by providing a space for students to answer the Chapter Essential Question and demonstrate their knowledge creatively.
  • Chapter Test: Collect clear-cut data on student understanding with the Chapter Assessment. Teachers are free to customize online tests or access the tools to create their own and track student progress. Printable Chapter Tests are also available for in-class use.
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