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…

The devices, apps, and websites that are so intertwined in our students’ lives offer enriching opportunities for social studies inquiries into the ethics of technology.

Guiding students to examine the historical perspectives of ordinary citizens like the schoolteacher who spurred New York City transit to desegregate, is a powerful way to demonstrate the impact that one individual can have.

An inquiry approach to studying the 1940s Mendez racial segregation case can counter a narrative that centers the triumph of heroes and instead prompt students to explore larger issues related to colorism, racism, and language segregation.

In this article, the authors share how a third-grade teacher supported students in crafting and researching their own inquiry questions using a process known as the Question Formulation Technique to scaffold students’ development of supporting questions. Hughes and Heckart provide the reader with suggestions and resources for supporting student-initiated inquiry. 

Students are bombarded daily with a torrent of media messages, many of them with historical content. By selecting the right media documents for decoding, teachers can teach core content while guiding students to think critically about these messages.

Studying the artists and art of Japanese American incarceration can deepen student understanding about the experiences of 120,000 people forcibly removed from their homes during World War II.

Alexa Quinn James Madison University