Teaching high school history with picture books can enliven social studies content, advance students’ higher-order thinking skills, and help facilitate differentiated instruction.

Enabling students to pose and answer their own questions helps them evolve from passive learners to students who are actively engaged in their coursework.

Incorporating poetry into the social studies curriculum can help students develop reading and writing skills while building their content knowledge.

Even without in-person field trips, photographs stored online can stimulate enriching investigations of historic places.

One way to facilitate productive classroom discussions about racism and unequal power structures is to engage students in developing the discussion guidelines. This demonstrates respect for students’ needs and a willingness to share power.  

The authors describe five types of inquiry that keep students engaged, promote student agency, and meet the need of teachers for curriculum flexibility.   

Educators can get an inside look at how some classrooms have shifted to inquiry-based social studies with four documentary films featured in the The Making Inquiry Possible project. 

The featured lesson plan explores the history of scapegoating during epidemics and examines how politicians and media can exacerbate xenophobia.

One teacher’s experience recording video from the viewer’s perspective in Antarctica provides a creative model for inquiry-oriented activities to engage students in problem-based, real-world exploration.

Social studies narratives that portray individuals as either heroes or villains not only stifle students’ feelings of civic agency, but they minimize the role of community in creating social change