In an effort to establish and expand abilities related to perspective, three elementary education professors collaborated with a trio of local fifth-grade teachers to develop and teach a lesson on the topic. In this article, the authors begin with the description and sequencing of the lesson, continue with an explanation of book categories and some student responses from the read aloud, and finally, offer a description of the culminating writing activity with some sample student responses.

Tina M. Ellsworth and Toni Gates center their article around stories of Black joy, agency, and resistance of Black Kansas Citians. Ellsworth and Gates’ collaboration demonstrates how educators can effectively construct partnerships between schools and grassroots organizations. The authors of this piece will guide educators in ways to find local Black history in their cities, show how to draw on the IDM example, and provide lesson suggestions.

In this article, the authors highlight four children’s picture books that can be used to discuss gender diversity with young children in social studies.

In this piece, the authors unpack a heuristic developed by the Great First Eight curriculum for helping young children to recognize and act on injustice.

In this article, the author examines how the New York State Social Studies Resource Toolkit  supports argument discourse in social studies and then explores a primary teacher’s curricular and instructional decisions regarding the development of children’s argumentation skills. The study provides insights into how teachers can involve some of our youngest students in authentic, inquiry-based social studies learning that fosters argument discourse.

The authors provide an overview of teaching war and explore ways to situate these notions in the elementary classroom. As part of this discussion, they offer a guide for selecting appropriate texts for a thematic text set for children involving issues of war and peace.

International children’s picture books provide windows and mirrors for children and allow them to consider issues of fairness, justice, equity, diversity, and the common good as they build their nascent citizenship skills.

This article explores how to teach source evaluation to upper elementary students with a focus on the right to clean water that is recognized in a United Nations resolution of 2010, and based on the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. 

Handout to accompany Is the “Right to Clean Water” Fake News? An Inquiry in Media Literacy and Human Rights. Please see the article for information on  how to use this handout and full citations with titles, absent here for the students to discover as they go online. 

The article highlights how a class of toddlers spread their message about composting and repacking food. This curriculum emerged out of the students' interests, and it connected students' classroom experiences to their homes and communities, fostering a sense of power and agency in some of our youngest neighbors.