“The Fresh Market: Connecting Content, Children, Families, and the Community,” outlines the “fresh market project” and lays out an argument for a cross-curricular approach to teach social studies in a preschool classroom. The authors outline a process in which teachers met weekly to think of ways to embed content in science, technology, reading, engineering, art, math, and social studies in an effective and engaging manner. Their narrative highlights the power of interdisciplinary work with young children, with an emphasis on social studies as the connecting thread.

When teachers create lessons that include historical sources, it’s important to pay attention to source choice and source attribution. 

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.

The following articles have been selected from our three main journals for K-12 teachers: Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner. These articles are grouped by topic for easy reference. Also included are recent current event responses that address racism and call for human rights education. NCSS Current Events Responses (2020)Teaching about Race and Racism in the ClassroomThe African American Struggle for Civil RightsSlavery and Its LegacyRacism and Discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and People of ColorHuman Rights EducationMiddle Level…

In “Teaching about the Vietnam War: Centering Southeast Asian Refugee Voices through Children’s Literature,” Sohyun An provides content and pedagogic knowledge for teaching about the Vietnam War through Southeast Asian refugee children’s books. The author provides a brief overview of the war from Southeast Asian perspectives and describes two elementary schoolteachers’ instructional approaches to center Southeast Asian refugee experiences to the Vietnam War lessons. Along with this article, An also created the pullout for this issue, “Handouts and Resources for Teaching about the Vietnam War…

Teaching strategies for highlighting the variety of ways enslaved people resisted using children's literature and primary sources. 

In this article, Kimi Waite and Jennifer Burgin describe a three-step interdisciplinary framework for learning partnerships between TK–2 students and scientists that covers the NCSS themes SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY and PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ENVIRONMENTS. The authors showcase standards-aligned learning activities and resources to help practicing educators bring the Explorer Imprint vision into their classrooms.

Despite some drawbacks, such as overuse in classrooms, lack of student engagement, and historical inaccuracies, research has suggested that Hollywood movies can be an effective tool in the teaching and learning of social studies. This article describes a strategy for using film in the upper elementary classroom. The authors outline their strategy and delineate how the strategy incorporates each dimension of the NCSS C3 Framework.

The authors provide the reader an opportunity to see how second-grade children can use a twelfth-century painting as historical evidence to identify transportation modes, economic activities, and cultural features of Bianjing, an ancient Chinese city. They compare Bianjing with their community using modern mapping technology. Through this approach, art, history, geography, economics, technology, and civics are integrated into an engaging inquiry lesson.