In this article, the authors introduce a series of interconnected, inquiry-based activities from a fifth grade social studies curriculum, "My Place in Time and Space," which was developed in part through a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional Grant Program--Eastern Region. These activities are designed to…

To explore questions in history and to construct historical narratives, historians work with evidence from the past. This approach to teaching history (inquiry involving the use of evidence) is an accepted part of the research on history teaching and is promoted widely in standards frameworks and practitioner publications as "good history…

This study provides a clearer portrait of the extent to which practicing history and social studies teachers, who explicitly expressed an interest in the potential of technology and advocate the use of primary sources within their teaching, are using Internet technologies to prepare students to learn to think historically and in turn participate…

Understanding history is a challenge. In order to provide teachers with a tool that can help students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to interpret primary sources and reconcile various historical accounts, the authors developed the SCIM-C strategy. Grounded in research on teaching and learning history and building upon Riley's layers of…

Today's students are generally accustomed to seeing timelines of events, lists of names, and bulleted items, yet they lack an understanding of the complexity of historical analysis. Learning to read historical information from charts, for example, teaches students to evaluate the significance of change. Comparing related primary sources can…

A limited body of research examines the extent to which social studies teachers are actually utilizing primary sources that are accessible in traditional classroom-based formats versus web-based formats. This paper initiates an exploration of this gap in the literature by reporting on the result of a survey of secondary social studies teachers,…