One way to facilitate productive classroom discussions about racism and unequal power structures is to engage students in developing the discussion guidelines. This demonstrates respect for students’ needs and a willingness to share power.  

Implementing 25-minute instructional blocks when teaching online can help learners develop stronger inquiry skills and prevent the zombie-like effects of staring nonstop at a screen.

Incorporating poetry into the social studies curriculum can help students develop reading and writing skills while building their content knowledge.

Teaching a civil rights unit in the upper elementary grades can be difficult. Educators must sort through multiple resources, determine the quality and developmental appropriateness of the materials, synthesize and organize the resources into meaningful lessons, and teach the unit in the midst of pressures to minimize or eliminate social studies in deference to tested subjects. Many elementary teachers find this a daunting task, which they avoid. The authors suggest a ‚Äúdepth over breadth‚Äù model focused around children‚Äôs literature texts and primary sources. This article reviews selected…

While enslavement is a topic present in elementary social studies standards for all fifty states, it also remains one of the most difficult topics to teach. In this article, the authors offer lessons from their study of recently published children's books that depict enslavement. They also offer recommendations for an inquiry-based strategy aligned with the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards that will support students' learning about enslavement from any of the books in our study, or other books that may be available in a particular…

Writing is a bridge between the disciplines, offering a way to include social studies content in various lessons. In addition, writing serves as a way for students to process informational text, as they read content, reflect on it, and restate it in various ways‚Äî such as in a poem, a faux historical letter, or a caption under an illustration. In this article, the authors discuss in detail four types of formula poetry that easily connect with social studies content. Each formula helps students at various grade levels to write a basic poem. We discuss the structure for each type of poetry,…