Einstein once famously said: “If you can’t explain something simply, then you don’t really understand it.”
When teaching through the 7th grade social studies standards, I realized that I had a number of struggling readers (IEP, ELL, 504), academically remedial and just plain absent students who were slipping through the cracks as we progressed through the year, and so I developed an overly-simplified graphic organizer for each of the 65 standards. These have come in handy not only for catching students up, but also as quick review activities.
Essentially, you could teach all of the content of 7th grade social studies to a 2nd grader with these. Each (downloadable!) graphic organizer PDF also comes with a short guiding video.
Byzantine Unit Graphic Organizers
Middle Ages Unit Graphic Organizers
Middle East Unit Graphic Organizers
West Africa Unit Graphic Organizers
Renaissance Unit Graphic Organizers
Reformation Unit Graphic Organizers
Scientific Revolution Graphic Organizers