Although many adults perceive young "digital natives" as savvy about our new media landscape, youth are regularly fooled by inaccurate stories and online scams. Furthermore, beyond the threat of outright false information, young people encounter confusing half-truths, misleading arguments, and disguised efforts to collect their personal…

Julia Kearney and Lori Bingham (pseudonyms), two middle school social studies teachers in a large urban school, have a problem. They want to have their students asking and exploring important questions about American history, and they want them to have the vocabulary knowledge needed to do so. While Julia and Lori recognize the rich linguistic…

Elementary teachers can maximize instructional time by interweaving social studies disciplines while fostering inquiry and promoting literacy development.

Jeremy Thomas and Russell McBride are social studies teachers in North Carolina and, until recently, were colleagues at a charter school outside of Raleigh, serving students in grades 6-12. After learning about the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), both teachers implemented it into their classrooms and immediately saw how the blueprint helped deepen…

In this article, the author shares the results of a case study that explored how using student-produced video essays supported historical thinking. The goal of this study was to explore the intersection of historical literacies in relationship with digital practices and see how digital literacies might be used to engage students' historical…

This article discusses creative writing which promotes literacy and content learning in a social studies classroom. In this article, the author states, that educators must encourage students' creative energies and enable them to engage with content in new and stimulating ways. One way to help students really learn about the concepts inherent in…

Discusses Hilda Taba's ideas and influence on the social studies curriculum and her work on a project to develop instructional guides for social studies teachers. Explores the importance of developing multiple objectives and organizing subject matter into key concepts, organizing ideas, and specific facts. Recommends emphasis on thinking, people,…

Traces the increasing concern among Americans over the energy situation and the state of the economy. Stresses the responsibility of the schools in educating students in matters of energy and the influence of energy on economic growth. A conceptual structure for an energy curriculum in social studies is presented. (DB)

Maintains that energy education can and should be included in the social studies curriculum. Suggests energy-related units and concepts for elementary, junior high, and senior high school and includes a directory of resources to help teachers develop the units. (DB)

Describes and explains how to create a visual reading guide (VRG). A VRG is defined as a pre-reading process for use with reading materials which contain pictures, cartoons, charts, graphs, or maps. (Author/DB)

Stresses the importance of vocabulary development in the social studies and identifies strategies a teacher can use to improve students' reading skills. Strategies and classroom activities include classification and association exercises, wide reading, dictionary and resource book use, and educational games. (Author/DB)

Presents arguments in favor of setting behavioral objectives for the social studies. A discussion of criticisms that have been made of the behavioral objective approach to curriculum development is presented. The author concludes that it is impossible to determine the success of a program without specific behavioral objectives. (Author/DB)

Describes preparation and implementation of a data analysis and card-sorting activity to help junior high and high school students use categories on a continuum to determine the power, status, and roles of men and women in India. (CK)

Contends that, although social studies teachers want students to think, research indicates that most teaching emphasizes knowledge, leaving few opportunities for students to think about it. Discusses criteria to assist teachers and strategies that promote student thinking. (CFR)

Describes the Chata Project, a British research project that challenged the prevalent assumption that children will construct sound causal explanations from factual information imparted during history instruction. Their research suggests that explicit instruction is required for children to understand the causal relationships among events,…