By some estimates, over 1.2 billion tons of soil was blown across the Great Plains during the height of the Dust Bowl. The so-called "black blizzards" these massive dust storms caused suffocated cattle, sickened children, and destroyed thousands of family farms. Formerly prosperous farmers, unsure why they had such bad luck, wondered if…

Picturebooks offer powerful supports for teaching diverse content across different curriculum areas. Research and curriculum resources document their use in inquiry-based education practices, particularly in relation to science and philosophy. There is, however, little theoretical analysis of this use or cross-curricular comparisons. Applying a…

This article describes a workshop to develop students' understanding of how to investigate a cross-disciplinary question that bridges science and history. The question 'Why did the "Titanic" sink?' is interpreted scientifically and then historically to help students to better appreciate the strengths and limitations of each discipline's…

Teachers value students' close reading of and text-based writing about diverse texts while eliciting their awareness of the world, privilege, and power. Carefully selected literature coupled with primary sources can bridge the classroom and society. To engage modern students in America's racialized past and present, this article guides teachers to…

One of the most effective methods for teaching social studies events, concepts, and issues incorporates the fine arts into lesson plans. The fine arts, such as photography, architecture, paintings, tapestries, and sculptures reflect the core cultural values, political ideals, and religious beliefs of a civilization and offer excellent…

History departments in universities across the country are facing acute pressure to increase enrollments. In this article, the author describes an effort to boost history enrollments that they have spearheaded over the past couple of years: teaching the history of engineering online. In particular, the author would strongly encourage history…

Virtual exchange is gaining popularity in formal and non-formal education, partly as a means to internationalise the curriculum, and also to offer more sustainable and inclusive international and intercultural experiences to young people around the world. This volume brings together 19 case studies (17 in higher education and two in youth work) of…

There can be no doubt that mobile technologies are here to stay. Global mobile traffic grew 74 percent in 2015 alone, with 563 million devices and connections added -- most of them tablets and Smartphones. This growth has been 4000-fold in the past 10 years and 400 million-fold in the past 15 years (Cisco, 2016). Mobile technologies permeate the…

What could two dozen middle school students, two teachers, land surveyors, journalists, divers, college professors, lawyers, archaeologists, an author, and an 85-year old retiree possibly have in common? The answer is their insatiable quest to redefine colonial American history. From geodesy to glaciology, from geology to hydrology, from…

Many educational researchers across the United States have found that inquiry-based learning (IBL) supports the development of deep, meaningful content knowledge. However, integrating IBL into classroom practice has been challenging, in part because of contrasting conceptualizations and practices across educational fields. In this article, we (a)…

To address the disparity in the skills of entering students and the goals of the first-year learning community (LC) program, the authors created a series of scaffolded, or tiered, writing assignments around the concept of kingship to move students from summary to analysis to synthesis. For each assignment, the authors incorporate informal…

When teachers ask upper middle school and high school students what they know about the Westward movement, the students usually draw on their experiences with simulation games. Rather than rely on simulation games or texts to help students understand that era, these authors advocate moving middle or high school students from a simplistic to a…

What should we do with our brightest and best? Neal Watkin and Johannes Ahrenfelt suggest an enquiry for a very high ability Year 8 group which is both challenging and genuinely historical. The enquiry itself has cross-curricular elements within its historical framework: it draws on geography, sociology and citizenship. This should not distract us…

As part of a reform effort utilizing project-based learning, A Washington high school offered an interdisciplinary course on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Students were involved in every phase of the course, and projects ranged from writing a textbook with third-grade partners to building a log building. The class canoed down the Columbia river…

Several articles in previous editions of "Teaching History" have touched on the themes of cross curricularity, Assessment for Learning and the most able. Tony McConnell and Mandy Monaghan bring these themes together in describing how the English and history departments in their school have taken advantage of a natural area of overlap to…