OPEN ACCESS

Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes September/October 2022

By Scott M. Waring

MEMBERS ONLY

“People Changed How They Thought About Life After Being Sideways”: Exploring Perspective in a Fifth-Grade Classroom

By Eric Groce, Robin Groce, Cacey Wells, Carly Mize, Kirbi Bell, Jennie Weschler

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.

OPEN ACCESS

Disrupting Dominant Narratives of Asian Americans in the United States Using Yang’s Front Desk

By Nidhi Khiantani, Lisa Brown Buchanan

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.

OPEN ACCESS

Pullout

Teaching NCSS Themes Using Yang’s Front Desk

By Nidhi Khiantani, Lisa Brown Buchanan

Pullout for "Disrupting Dominant Narratives of Asian Americans in the United States Using Yang’s Front Desk"

MEMBERS ONLY

Critical Identity Literacy with Young Learners: Exploring Gender and Race at the Intersection of Social Studies and Visual Arts

By Xiaoying Zhao, Christie Angleton

Two early childhood researchers from a local public university, have been visiting Mrs. Ball’s kindergarten classroom in a small, rural elementary school in the Midwest to read books and discuss characters’ identities. In this article, the authors share stories of how they laid the foundation for these conversations and others like it through intentional pedagogical considerations starting at the beginning of the school year.

OPEN ACCESS

Teaching Young Learners with the C3 Framework

So We Want Kindergarteners to Argue? Developing Argumentation Skills in the Kindergarten Classroom

By Patricia Krizan

In this article, the author examines how the New York State Social Studies Resource Toolkit  supports argument discourse in social studies and then explores a primary teacher’s curricular and instructional decisions regarding the development of children’s argumentation skills. The study provides insights into how teachers can involve some of our youngest students in authentic, inquiry-based social studies learning that fosters argument discourse.