As Instructional Supervisor for Montgomery County Public Schools, I found that many teachers wanted help locating resources that would facilitate their teaching the Virginia social studies standards.  After giving this much thought, I came up with the idea of creating mini-posters for classroom use.  I developed a few for kindergarten and shared my idea with teachers.  The over-
whelming response was positive, so I created a complete kindergarten set and gave copies to a few teachers to field-test.  Word spread and soon teachers in other grades wanted poster sets for their classroom as well.  Each grade submitted a list of topics for which they wanted posters, and over time I developed them for grades K-3.  At present I am working on a set for Virginia studies.  I hope to have these finished by December 2002.

When I planned the posters, my goal was to create a visually pleasing display that contained both pictures and text.  I decided to include the exact language contained in the Virginia Curriculum Framework.  I added no other information.  As an example, kindergarten students need to know that Independence Day is in July.  They do not need to know that it occurs on July 4th.  Thus, the poster for Independence Day does not say "July 4th", only "July."  In some cases the same image is used for a historical figure that is studied in more than one grade, but the information about the person is different.

The posters may be used for educational purposes only.  They may not be used in any way that will result in monetary gain.  Any teacher in Virginia has permission to copy them or to tell other teachers about this site.  Finally, third grade teachers might consider using the K-2 posters as a resource for review prior to testing.

Links to the poster sets follow.  They can be downloaded and printed on paper, cardstock, or transparency film.  They also can be imported into electronic presentations.

Send comments or questions to melissa@bev.net.