Frustrated by her students' glib use of catch-all terms such as 'militarism' in addressing causation, Alexia Michalaki wanted her Year 9 students to produce mature causal explanations of World War I. To encourage this to happen she went back into decades of pedagogical writing and research, teasing out the ways in which others have sought to…

Although history teachers have long been frustrated by the limitations of the National Curriculum Attainment Target and by demands to use it for purposes for which it was never intended, its official abolition has come as quite a shock. As Michael Fordham makes clear, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to rethink the way in which we assess…

Although the Common Core and C3 Framework highlight literacy and inquiry as central goals for social studies, they do not offer guidelines, assessments, or curriculum resources. This practical guide presents six research-tested historical investigations along with all corresponding teaching materials and tools that have improved the historical…

According to the authors, five years ago their school district embraced Understanding by Design as the organizing framework for curriculum. The emphasis on enduring understandings and essential questions led the sixth grade social studies teachers to reevaluate what they were teaching in their World History Curriculum. Together the authors worked…

This paper addresses some real assessment challenges that teachers have identified: (1) Figuring out what really is important for students to know and be able to do in history; (2) Teaching the skills of "doing history" in a world of testing that often seems to value only factual knowledge; (3) Identifying and using assessments that provide…

In this article, the author relates her experiences teaching a history course titled "Introduction to the Modern World." She relates how some of her colleagues immediately began providing her with unsolicited warnings regarding the difficulty of engaging students in world history and the impossibility of covering "500 years of the whole world" in…

This resource text was designed to provide suggestions and ideas that might be helpful in developing an advanced placement/honors U.S. history course. It opens with tips on teaching essay skills, sample essay examinations, strategies for incorporating essays into lesson plans, document-based question guidelines/hints, and strategies for grading…

Step-by-step guidelines to help educators and community groups implement a National Women's History Week essay contest, in which elementary and secondary students write about women, are provided. Students are encouraged to write about a woman they personally know so that they can conduct an oral history interview. An alternate approach would be to…

Assigned to teach a freshman composition course with a history and reading co-requisite, a New York college instructor developed a course in which students would begin to see history--through their reading, writing, and thinking--as a series of events intricately connected with their own lives and ways of looking at the world, rather than…