NCSS's framework for social studies education, "The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards," is centered on the concept of inquiry. As social studies teachers have worked to incorporate historical inquiry, many have understandably emphasized the teaching of historical thinking and democratic…

Integrating local history with national or even global history can help students to find social studies more meaningful, to make connections between course content and their own lives and surroundings. In this article, we describe a project in which seventh grade students in Istanbul, Turkey, located centuries-old trees still living in their urban…

"Americans," historian Richard White often reminds his audiences, "prefer celebrating to remembering history." The landscape of the United States is populated with local, state, and national sites, house museums, working farms and other places of collective past that are deemed of historic significance. Many of these sites do…

One of the challenges that social studies educators face daily is how to make student learning relevant. Digital technologies can play an important role by connecting what happens in the classroom to the world beyond. One way to do this is by turning students into producers of information and having them create content rather than simply consume.…

The Arizona Heritage Project began in 2003 when the Salt River Project (SRP) celebrated its centennial. This Arizona utility sponsored five student groups engaged in documenting Arizona history. Cactus Shadows High School in Cave Creek, Arizona--an old cowboy town about 20 miles north of Phoenix--was one of the recipients of a $3,000 grant to…

Samuel Gist was a wealthy British merchant who, toward the end of his life, lived in England, but owned a considerable amount of land with a large number of slaves in America. Upon his death in 1815, his will specified that within one year his slaves should be emancipated, and his estate was to provide them with a new beginning in the form of…

Decades of research into which instructional strategies are successful in K-12 history and social studies conclude that having students write is extremely important. Effective writing assignments--whether a 3- to 5-paragraph essay, a longer term-paper-style assignment, or even a fictional short story based on a historical period or event--require…

A typical U.S. high school student today might be able to recite some milestones of civil rights history--the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56; the Freedom Rides of 1961; and (some would add) the election of the first African American president in 2008. But how many students understand that these events, which historians call out as milestones,…

The Federal Writers' Project was an arm of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Franklin Delano Roosevelt's massive program to put the unemployed back to work. The Writers' Project was charged with producing an extensive guidebook for each of the 48 states; and more than 6,000 local newspaper writers, novelists, poets, college professors, and…

In this article, the authors speak of an encounter they had in which they discovered some forgotten and unused historical resources hidden in a storage closet at the Cherokee County Georgia Historical Society. From these resources, they were able to weave an intriguing narrative encompassing people and events in history. They hope their story will…

Discusses how oral history can motivate elementary students in the social studies. Suggests oral history learning activities and procedures to help students recreate events from the past. (CK)

Suggests ways in which social studies educators can use resources such as cemeteries and tombstones to enliven the study of history. Explains how analyzing tombstones can introduce one to historical research methodology. A case study is presented in which Civil War history is investigated by visits to cemeteries in the Adirondacks and to the…

Provides suggestions for turning the search for local history materials into a coherent package for the classroom. Teachers should choose a project that teaches skills and helps shape student values. A thematic approach (for example, transportation) contributes to selectivity and is useful for producing a sourcebook. (KC)

Suggests primary sources for studying local ethnic groups when conventional textbooks omit or distort information. Primary sources include church and census records, city directories, oral tradition, pictorial records, programs, and artifacts such as statues and plaques. (AV)

Presents a lesson plan on the San Antonio River missions. Suggests that students will learn about the role of Spanish missions in the history of the Southwest, the psychological and cultural factors that led Indians to accept mission life, and Spanish contributions to agriculture through irrigation systems. Includes student readings, maps, and…