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 opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. The organizing and teaching of history conceptualized and taught in a powerful…

History and social studies teachers searching the World Wide Web for multicultural curricular materials will find a plethora of resources ranging from primary documents to divergent perspectives on contemporary social justice issues. In this article, the author provides a vetted guide to some of the most progressive, powerful, and multicultural of…

This article describes how the author developed and implemented a course on World War II that has an oral history component. The author describes the format of the World War II course and the oral history component within the course framework. The author uses classroom presentations by veterans to enliven his World War II history class and enhance…

A seasoned history professor explores the dynamics of teaching a session on Reconstruction during the last class meeting of the semester.

This article describes how students in an American history class learned about the Civil War through soldiers' letters. Letters from the Civil War era come in a variety of styles and syntax. Some are easy to read while others are extremely difficult to transcribe. But every one of them speaks to the reader, revealing an unknown entity from another…

This article reports on strategies used by immersion teachers to modify their speech in order to maintain the use of the target language while sustaining interactive communication and the concomitant teaching of the content and the second language. This classroom-based research, undertaken at Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in Melbourne, sources…

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have had tragic effects for history teachers and students in Canada, the United States, and abroad. Yet, despite increased educational research in historical thinking, very little is known about students' historical understanding of terrorism. This exploratory study looks at some Canadian, but…

In this article, the author describes a social studies class activity that uses primary sources to develop a soap opera based on the American Civil War. In the soap opera activity, students can watch historical characters as they grow, develop, and change. Not only do people in the soap opera develop over a long period, but their accumulated…

In K-12 contexts, the teaching of English language learners (ELLs) has been greatly influenced by the theory and practice of content-based instruction (CBI). A focus on content can help students achieve grade-level standards in school subjects while they develop English proficiency, but CBI practices have focused primarily on vocabulary and the…

Most history books for children focus on people, places, and events. In a different approach, some authors focus on an object--an everyday item that might be ignored when it comes to writing history. They shine a spotlight on the item, and in the process, they add insight and interest to human history. This article looks at four outstanding books…

The paper reports on the outcomes of a Department of Culture, Museums and Sport (DCMS) funded project which provided resources for three groups of teachers in different subjects and age phases to have some time where they were freed from their teaching responsibilities, and also given time to meet together with other teachers to share ideas. The…

Much of what students learn never appears to connect to their lives. They learn facts, they study events, and they read stories of others. Teachers need to help students make these associations, and sometimes that means expanding the curriculum. To help her language arts students make connections between their lives and the realities of life…

The National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) recognize the efficacy of teaching science within the context of history, emphasizing the evolution of concepts, models, and theories. By studying science in a historical context, students view themselves less as spectators and more as participants in this human quest for truth and understanding.…

In this paper we describe the action research projects of two second-grade teachers. Using the state-mandated content on famous Americans, the teacher/researchers developed foundational levels of historical thinking in their second grade students. To develop temporal understanding, the first teacher employed a time line of visual images to place…

National history and collective memory and their impact on adolescents' knowledge and attitudes are the topic of this article. A follow-up study, it examines the long-term impact of a journey to historical monuments. Israeli Jewish high-school students have the option of experiential study, visiting cities and death camps in Poland. The first…