Second-graders engaged in complex reading, writing, and thinking about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Close readings of secondary and primary sources situated students to discover incongruencies between what is reported within trade-books and what is revealed within historical documents. Scaffolding directed students' scrutiny of…

Limited professional training regarding elementary social studies content and pedagogy contributes to the reduction of elementary social studies instruction. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore how the experiences of elementary educators during the 2018 Alabama Bicentennial Summer Institutes held in Mobile,…

In this study, I sought to understand the disciplinary nature of an expert third-grade teacher's practice as she apprenticed students into ways of reading, analyzing, and employing historical evidence. Using a case study methodology, I draw on classroom observation data, teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts to identify instances where the…

In recent years, disciplinary literacy has offered a promising approach to history instruction in K-12 schools. Disciplinary literacy in history (hereafter, "historical literacy") entails approaching texts with an awareness of the interpretive nature of the field, reading and analyzing a variety of primary and secondary sources in…

First-grader students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing during Reading, Writing, and Social Studies classes. Students scrutinized secondary sources, which were largely biographies of Lincoln, to build their…

This study investigates how 19 third-grade students developed their understandings of enslavement during a six-week social studies inquiry. Using Teaching Tolerance's key concepts as my analytic framework, I analyzed the students' pre- and post-concept maps and classwork to understand their learning. The findings show that students conceptualized…

First graders engaged in an extended historical inquiry. Close readings of secondary and primary sources evoked rich class discussion. Scaffolding directed students' scrutiny of secondary sources for historical gaps; they ably detected source and intent within the primary sources. Students articulated newly constructed understandings through…

Introducing patriotic holidays such as Veterans Day with historical photographs and other primary sources in classrooms can not only spark children's interest, but also promote critical thinking and historical comprehension. Meaningful, hands-on historical lessons can also motivate children to take informed action about issues they care about. We…

In middle schools and high schools across the country, students analyze primary sources, engaging with and asking critical questions about historical documents. But the students who generated these observations, reflections, and questions were kindergartners--five- and six-year olds, working with Library of Congress staff to help refine strategies…

The integration of innovative interdisciplinary approaches to the ?-12 Curriculum aims to deepen students' knowledge and help them develop transversal skills. Applying an interdisciplinary lens, with a focus on pandemics, can help shape attitudes by means of inculcating the values of responsible global citizenship, and a high sense of personal and…

This manuscript explores the power of using inquiry in a second-grade classroom to make students' understanding of citizenship more complex. It describes an inquiry unit in which students studied primary sources, engaged with fiction and nonfiction children's literature, and participated in interdisciplinary learning to further understand the…

While social studies educators suggest that social studies instruction can and should be taught both through literacy-integrated delivery as well as independently from other subjects, many elementary classroom teachers often find that school expectations or district mandates leave little instructional time for any subject that is not specifically…

This document presents the proceedings of the 24th Annual Research Forum held June 27, 2019, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following eleven action research papers: (1) How Does Student Goal Setting Affect Motivation to Learn? (Wendell Dunn); (2) Combatting Confirmation Bias: How Writing from Opposing…

With the adoption of new content standards, teachers are often left without adequate curriculum resources. This study examined how educators used their curricular resources to teach new mathematics standards in the USA. Analyses of open-ended survey responses from 257 teachers and teacher-leaders in Grades 3 through Grade 5 indicated that every…

February 2017 marked the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 (EO 9066), issued on February 19, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. While this domestic aspect of World War II is often taught in secondary history classes, it is rarely studied in elementary schools. However, children's…