Students establish connection to location of cultures and understanding for people from the past. Students gather information through classroom procedures to examine music and artifacts. The implication of working with artifacts for the social studies field includes students getting opportunities to do critical thinking when they use the…

A reenactment is the recreation of a scene, time period, or event as authentically as possible by a group of people. An educational reenactment takes the in-depth cultural experience of participating in a reenactment and joins it with the educational structure of a social studies classroom. Reenactments can be as varied as historical…

This article describes a unit of study about Colonial America given in Lubbock, Texas, in which fifth grade students learn about the crafts system by becoming apprentices for a time. The students apply to apprentice with a master crafts person, a mentor, and learn some basic methods of a craft. Mentors are typically students' relatives, friends of…

Harold O. Rugg was one of a small group of leaders of the Progressive Education Movement centered at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a leader among the Social Frontier group that emerged in the 1930s to argue that schools should play a stronger role in helping to reconstruct the society. He was the author of an innovative and best…

Recent research indicates that social studies is being de-emphasized in the elementary school, particularly in favor of greater attention to reading. Historically, there is evidence that social studies has not been a strong component of the curriculum in elementary classrooms although it often appears in state and local courses of study. In the…

Criticisms of Howard Zinn's work on U.S. History are examined in the context of increasing emphasis on the idea of "American exceptionalism" in contemporary political and cultural discourse, and particularly the insertion of American exceptionalism into revised social studies standards for the state of Texas. Analysis focusing on the…

Glaciers are an excellent subject for elementary social studies classes. Their effects are easy for students to model with inexpensive teaching supplies, such as sand and ice. Students can conduct research nationally with virtual field trips or locally with real field trips. The models and research can be used as starting point for a discussion of…

In its 1995 definition of social studies, the National Council for the Social Studies (NC SS) explicitly identifies "citizenship for the common good" as the purpose of social studies education. The roots of this perspective can be traced to early twentieth-century educators. In their introduction to the seminal "1916 Report of the Committee on…

As character education continues to be an objective of the social studies, the more effective educators have taken up the challenge by first understanding the principles of their discipline and the opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. Social studies is rediscovering the focus on the actual men and women of history…

What would happen if social studies student used spaces marked out on the floor and physical movement to learn social studies? Would such a lesson conform with the Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies? Students get out of their chairs and away from their desks to perform events within a defined space elsewhere in the room…

This article describes an extracurricular social studies enrichment program called the Clio Club. "Clio" is derived from the Greek muse of history, and the club offers a variety of activities to help students discover and interpret social studies beyond the traditional school hours. They meet after school and on weekends both at their…

This article explores PowerPoint slideshow's capacities for introducing history teachers and students to the pictorial and digital turns for representing and narrating the past. Based upon this research, the author argues that image-dominated PowerPoint slideshow provides teachers and students with a unique and powerful tool for composing and…

The study is to examine if preservice teachers improve their social studies teaching and learning when they follow a structured and guided methods course based on the four-step social studies teaching cycle. The four steps are 1) preinstructional exploration, 2) assessment development, 3) instructional development, and 4) reflective extension. The…

Social studies is a survivor, enduring as a mainstay of the American curriculum for nearly 100 years. Its longevity is not a tribute to its curricular power nor can we credit a cadre of finely trained professionals for maintaining its influence. Rather, social studies' remarkable survival is due to the near-universal acceptance of the idea that…

The notion that one can argue history "versus" social studies requires that one commit to a troublesome dichotomy resulting in a partitioning of the two subjects into separate entities. As practiced in the schools, the courses consistently overlap. In fact, the commonalities are so extensive that often the terms social studies and history are used…