Integrating writing into the social studies curriculum ought to be easy. After all, within any rich unit of study, there are endless possibilities for students to record, synthesize, and respond to new content with written words. Learning is enhanced by multiple opportunities to write, and what better way to teach composition than in the vivid…

Creating a story quilt is a powerful and alternative way for students to demonstrate understanding of social studies content. This article describes the use of story quilts in elementary school classrooms at three different grade levels (1st, 3rd, and 5th). In each unit of study, the teacher devoted, on average, three to four weeks to guiding…

Display boards and wall maps, created by a teacher or designed by a company, are a common sight in most elementary classrooms, but students usually have a rather limited role in constructing these materials. The main objective of this article is to describe some techniques for encouraging students to create social studies displays that can serve…

Mental flexibility emerges as an essential skill for preparing young learners for global competency and denotes the ability to learn from and about different perspectives. Students who are regularly exposed to "alternative approaches to a wide range of scientific, social and everyday problems" appear to be more receptive to alternative solutions…

Artists are inventors. Some invent objects and images that look totally new and never before seen. Others invent or replicate views of people and places familiar or fascinating to them. Artists often originate well-designed, useful pieces that play a part in society's pragmatic or spiritual activities. Still others create objects that look like…

Recently, the teachers at the author's school completed a group project with their eighth-graders in which they recreated a mural version of the famous painting by Pablo Picasso, "Guernica." This activity was aimed at: (1) studying the rise of Fascism in Spain and Germany during the Spanish Civil War prior to World War II; (2) learning…

This autobiographical piece of collaborative discensus (Gershon, 2008; Gershon, Peel & Bilinovich, 2009) presents the authors' interwoven perspectives about the challenges they faced as they talked about race in a pre-service social studies class. Their work here serves two main purposes. First it is an opportunity for a teacher and two former…

Recently, rationale development has received renewed attention as a core theme of social studies teacher education. To date, however, this interest has yet to spark a significant body of research. This study addresses the gap between recommendations and research regarding rationale development in teacher education programs and the rationale-based…

Current approaches to science-technology-society (STS) education focus primarily on the controversial socio-scientific issues that arise from the application of science in modern technology. This paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to STS education that embraces science, technology, history, and social and cultural studies. By employing…

The author discusses how high school social studies teachers can have their students investigate local history topics and share their findings by producing Web pages, using a cooperative learning structure. The author discusses his firsthand experiences using this approach with high school students at Warrensburg High School. He emphasizes the…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the intended allocation of social studies time based on written timetables provided by elementary classroom teachers to students completing practicum requirements in a teacher education program. The timetables specify how time is prioritized for academic learning time as well as non-academic activities. The…

In this article, the author shares what he learned at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Meeting held in November 2009 in Atlanta. At NCSS 2009, the author realized how far behind he is with technological advances applied to classroom instruction. Many school districts and individual schools prevent students from using cell…

With today's emphasis on preparing students for standardized testing, it can be daunting for classroom teachers to find and justify time for the arts within the academic curriculum. Handmade books, however, offer a creative and academically enriching solution to this dilemma. In this article, the author describes how students made construction…

The author shares the challenges faced in her social studies methods class due to the constraints of NCLB. By incorporating the jackdaw kit project within her social studies methods course, her candidates were able to connect what they were talking about in methods and apply it to their students teaching situations where there was little time for…

Too often, social studies educators are asked to focus their design and enactment of learning experiences on the mastery of content knowledge, often at the expense of other aims and goals. In response to this problem, the authors of this article explore the reclamation of dispositions in social studies curriculum planning and teaching. First, he…