Each volume of The Essentials is composed of a ring-binder and 120 worksheets on the main topics from the history, geography and science programme in years one and two.

These inclusive materials are particularly aimed at pupils with greater educational difficulties, pupils with disabilities and pupils with Special Educational Needs.

The structure of each folder allows students to insert new, original, individual and group worksheets, expanding the teaching material available to the whole class.

The worksheet folder is accompanied by a user’s guide for the teacher.

Text Objectives

With The Essentials two objectives to be reached are proposed:

• give the students with increased learning difficulties the possibility to learn fundamental concepts in the subject area, through guided writing and drawing activities, completion and colouring activities, with worksheets that deal directly with the subject themes and contents for the class indicated
• give the whole class the possibility to collaborate and work with each other on common topics, while at the same time encouraging the class to create additional worksheets to add to the folder, in order to increase the subject materials available for everyone.

Structure of the text

Each binder contains simplified worksheets dealing with three subjects: history, geography and science; each one indicated by a different colour. In particular, three different kinds of sheets are provided:

• Pathway worksheets
• Cooperative worksheets “Strength in numbers”
• Goal worksheets

In order not to burden the cognitive load of the worksheets, the deliveries addressed to the students were summarized in easy-access icons.

Pathway Worksheets

The Pathway Worksheets present essential key concepts on the main topics from the various subjects in a simplified way.

In the Pathway Worksheets,  more precisely, the essential aspects of the disciplinary contents are proposed in order to allow students with greater difficulties the possibility to participate and complete the activity. 

In particular, the Pathway Worksheets require the students to:

• trace and colour the titles written with dotted lines
• colour the pictures
• write, tracing the words written with dotted lines
• draw, completing the unfinished pictures
• write, completing the unfinished words
• match imagines 
• match words to pictures

Cooperative Worksheets

The Cooperative Worksheets “strength in numbers” propose activities that require interaction among the students: in some cases the work is organized in partners, and in others, small groups.

Goal Worksheets

The Goal Worksheets can be found at the end of each chapter and summarize the most important aspects of information proposed in the various Pathways Worksheets.  They are in A3 format, double the size of the other worksheets, and can be consulted at any time as a synthesis element for all the students. The A3 format also allows them to be used as summary posters to hang on the walls, always available to all students in the class.

The Goal Worksheets also offer the students the possibility to actively re-elaborate the information, completing some portions of text or illustrations, by hand or with the use of the stickers supplied in the folder.

My first year ring binder – Lower Secondary School

History
• The end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages
• The age of Charlemagne
• Feudal society
• The comunes and the Crusades
• The end of the Middle Ages

Geography
• Orienteering and geographical maps
• Mountains, hills and plains of Europe
• Rivers, lakes and seas of Europe
• Climate zones and biomes of Europe
• The population and economy of Europe

Science
• The scientific method, matter, heat, mixtures
• Water on earth and the atmosphere
• The soil
• Living things and the cell
• The classification of living things

Find out more!

My second year ring binder – Lower Secondary School

History
• The start of the Modern Age
• The seventeenth century
• The eighteenth century, the century of revolutions
• The nineteenth century
• The Unification of Italy

Geography
• The European Union
• The Iberian Peninsula and the Balkan Peninsula
• France, Monaco and Benelux, and Great Britain and Ireland
• Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland, and the DACH region
• Central-Eastern Europe, and Russia and the Western Republics

Science
• Ethology: animal behaviour
• Chemistry: chemical substances and their transformation
• Physics: forces, sound and light
• The human body: breathing, circulation and digestion
• The human body: the excretory system, skin, bones and muscle

Find out more!

My third year ring binder – Lower Secondary School

History
• The new century: the Twentieth Century
• World War I
• The period between the two wars
• The Second World War
• The post-war period

Geography
• The Planet Earth
• The Asian continent
• The African continent
• The American continent
• Oceania and Antarctica

Science
• Energy, electricity and magnetism
• Minerals, rocks and forces that shape the Earth
• The Earth and the Solar System
• The evolution and history of life
• The nervous system, the five senses, reproduction

Find out more!

The author

Carlo Scataglini Specialized teacher and author of numerous narrative and facilitated teaching texts.