Incorporating hip-hop lyrics into the social studies classroom increases curricular relevance and fuels engagement by centering student knowledge and lived experiences.

Teachers across the nation and world are experimenting with inquiry-driven pedagogy like Project Based Learning to improve student learning. Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. PBL is an effective and enjoyable way to learn and allows deeper content and skill development that is needed for success in college, career and civic life.

Encouraging students to participate in local civic activities for a classroom project enables them to develop real-world connections to social studies content.  

When students participate in classifying, transcribing, and organizing primary sources for digital history archives, they engage in historical analysis and generate data that can accelerate historical discoveries.

The exercise of writing opinion pieces allows students to explore real-world issues while challenging their understanding of the past.

A few key strategies related to the selection and framing of issues, pedagogical choices, and classroom atmosphere can pave the way for successfully teaching controversial issues in fraught times.

The College, Career, and Civil Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards guides teachers to initiate complex inquiries by sparking students' disciplinary literacy and critical analysis of rich sources. With effective scaffolding and engaging content, elementary students can explore and contextualize complex historical topics. In this article, the authors present the findings of a fourth grade study in which students examined primary sources and trade books about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, and issues that affected the African American community. They…

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…

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.

An inquiry-based approach to tackling hard history such as the one outlined in this article helps mitigate the instructional challenges presented by our current political climate.