One thing I recall from my undergrad in History, is that no matter what classes I would take, no matter how seemingly unrelated, they all would relate somehow to each other.

Matt Doran explores the idea of  making current events a central driving force in social studies in his blog – https://www.21socialstudies.com/blog/teaching-history-through-current-events-every-day-can-be-a-current-events-day.  One issue he identifies as a challenge is study of our history becomes non-linear and quite disjointed chronologically.   But I like his idea for dealing with that which is to start the year with a broad chronological overview in the first part of the year, and also use a regularly-updated wall map and time line to help keep track of connections.

I like the idea of a chronological (timeline) and geographical (wall map) reinforcers to show linkages and relationships.   I also think that because the curricular competencies and content requirements of the social studies are so concentrated into a few areas, it would be possible to structure cluster of current event into these types of buckets, e.g. current events that demonstrate differences in perspective/worldview. These could also be demonstrated in a visual manner in the classroom.