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.

This article models the integration of social studies and language arts commonly used in elementary classrooms by using a text that incorporates straightforward social studies content in the context of the daily experiences of a Chinese family in the U.S. The authors illustrate how to use the award-winning novel, Front Desk by Kelly Yang, with young learners in grades 4–6 to examine the myriad of experiences with class, race, language, and exploitation that immigrants from China to the United States often encounter.

A number of education theorists propose that promoting civic engagement in classrooms is essential to supporting children in learning how to participate in shaping decisions that affect their lives. Müge Olğun Baytaş and Stephanie Schroeder examine civic education with younger students and note that early childhood and elementary educators can take a leading role in fostering civic engagement and agency with even the youngest of children. The authors share an approach where children’s literature can be used to introduce young children to the concept of citizenship as active civic and…

This article and accompanying pullout describes a process for developing inquiry projects, based on the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), for students in grades K-2. In this article, he provides examples from preservice teachers that show that the process can lead to high-quality social studies teaching in primary grades. 

Launched with only 15 teachers to support implementation of the C3 Framework, today C3 Teachers is a network of thousands dedicated to moving social studies in new directions. 

Since the mainstream U.S. history curriculum often excludes Asian Americans’ struggles and resilience, many educators in the United States struggle to teach this subject. In particular, few studies explore how elementary social studies teachers use culturally relevant pedagogy to help Asian American students analyze and critique anti-Asian violence. This article addresses the gap.

Jenn Hooven, Mark Kissling, and Misty Woods show how children between the ages of 3 and 5 learn to be ecological citizens at the Child Care Center at Hort Woods on Penn State’s University Park campus. The authors demonstrate how the curriculum provides a learning focus on animals, insects, plants, weather, and nature-at-large and includes both planned and spontaneous connections to the outdoors. 

The latest Septima Clark Book Award recipients shine a light on the stories of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet; Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress; and numerous female athletes who shattered stereotypes.

In this article, the authors present three alternatives to the traditional instructional approaches to Black history education at the elementary level: family stories/oral histories, counter-storytelling, and chronological overlaying. They provide a description of the Black Historical Consciousness framework, connect theories that fit within this framework to explain our pedagogical recommendations, and share instructional approaches.

In this article, the author discusses the work of a public-school teacher in New York City whose commitment to social justice has led to the design and teaching of a lesson that directly addresses the meanings and manifestations of social class with her fourth- and fifth-grade students.