In a highly technological society, teachers need to help students grow as technoskeptical citizens who can think deeply about technologies to consider their collateral, unintended, and disproportionate effects on society. This article presents a technoskeptical Inquiry Design Model (IDM) lesson where upper elementary students critically inquire…

The authors provide the reader an opportunity to see how second-grade children can use a twelfth-century painting as historical evidence to identify transportation modes, economic activities, and cultural features of Bianjing, an ancient Chinese city. They compare Bianjing with their community using modern mapping technology. Through this…

A troubling observation is that--outside of Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, during which students are acquiring some knowledge about noteworthy women and minorities--teachers in every grade level often teach about the same figures rather than expanding their lessons to include less-conventional or…

In this article, we offer a rich description for how to highlight women's voices in history through storytelling while engaging students in historical thinking skills rooted in primary source documents.

Sports can be a unique platform to teach third-grade students about women's history and civic values. This lesson addresses two social studies practices for the third grade in the New York State K-8 Social Studies Framework (Gathering, Interpreting, and Using Evidence; and Chronological Reasoning and Causation) and three themes from the National…

Young children's self-identification and self-identity are essentially a set of conscious and unconscious beliefs built from experiences. Students' self-image, and their understanding of society, can change when they research how women contributed to our nation and to our daily lives. Such lessons can render these historical figures accessible and…

In many elementary classrooms nationwide, less and less time is spent on social studies. Lack of attention to social studies is evident in states like New York where teacher evaluations are contingent on students' performance on two subjects: English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. In this article, the authors describe their experience…

Each year, the author shares her passion for the history of writing with her third grade students and teaches them about how writing has developed over time. The unit of study described herein excites and engages young writers to appreciate the antiquity of writing, while sowing seeds in their minds that will take root and grow as each student…

Provide your students with handwritten letters from three young students to then U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, written a few months prior to the first celebration of Earth Day on April 22, 1970. These primary source historical documents can be a part of upper elementary students' exploration of civic activism in the service of…

One of the authors, Erin Green, recognized the importance of learning about her students' identities early in the year to support her relationships with students. She also saw an opportunity for an initial inquiry into identity, which would model aspects of her approach to social studies. Her goals for this initial inquiry were to support…

A typical social studies lesson for elementary students often includes the memorization of facts and dates, but lacks the inquiry-based instruction that could promote purposeful engagement with historical sources. In this social studies learning experience, framed in the tenets of transcaring and the C3 Framework, students actively and…

While guest teaching in a third-grade classroom as part of her doctoral studies, the author became interested in how students think about female pioneers and what it means to be first in a historical sense. This article explores the potential of interactive read-aloud books to teach women's history with young students.

Biography is a popular approach to history education in the younger grades, especially when teaching units of study during Women's History Month, which is March. A biography-centered approach, however, can be problematic when such lessons are not tied to any context, promoting the misconception that individuals create social change in isolation.…

There have been many significant changes in education over the last fifty years, but few have been as swift and all-encompassing as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Discussed and debated everywhere, and now implemented in many states, the CCSS initiative set out to transform our nation's K-12 educational system by providing clear…

Historical structures have connected civilization across time as a representation of important events, famous people, or experiences of diverse cultures. The value systems of a society are reflected in these structures and convey political and historical information. Knowledge about historical structures provides understanding of cultures of…