This article describes and defends a revision of the traditional elementary social studies curriculum rationale. It calls for retaining most of the same topics, but developing them more coherently and shifting emphasis from the expanding communities sequence to introducing students to the fundamentals of the human condition as the primary…

Presents study results of fifth graders' attitudes toward history. Includes interviews with the student subjects concerning what they know about history, what they want to know, and reasons to study history. Concludes that fifth graders are interested in history and familiar with the past but vague on the interpretive nature of history. (DK)

Historical accounts by fourth graders at the beginning stage of learning history show that these young students lack an experience-based framework for grounding and connecting historical teaching. Implications for teaching history to elementary school students and aspects of children's reliance on imagination in constructing historical narratives…

This paper summarizes and discusses the findings from interviews of 10 fifth graders conducted before and after each of their six U.S. history units. Special reference is made to potential curricular and instructional implications from the findings. The 10 students began the year with little historical knowledge and they displayed numerous…

Prior to their first curriculum unit (on history and the work of historians) in an American history course, three classes of fifth graders stated what they knew (or thought was true) about history and what they wanted to learn about it. After the unit, they reported what they had learned. In addition, a stratified sample of 10 students was…

History is alive! That is one of the important messages that teacher Barbara Knighton communicates to her students as she develops engaging stories about changes in farming, government, clothing, or transportation, using timelines as her basis. In this article, the authors describe how Knighton constructs social studies units for her first and…

This book addresses the teaching and learning of history in the elementary grades. The literature review in the first two chapters presents an overview of scholarship in the field and provides a context within which to interpret the research in subsequent chapters. The remainder of the book presents and discusses research on the teaching and…

A case study of the methods of teaching U.S. history that have been developed by an exemplary fifth-grade teacher is presented. It includes description, rationale, and examples of the instructor's overall approach, along with detailed recording of everything done during a month-long unit on the English colonies. The teacher's approach is notable…

Reviews "Teaching and Learning in History," calling it more appropriate for people interested in history as a discipline rather than school history imbedded within social studies. The volume provides more for readers examining cognitive science-based novice-expert studies than readers interested in guidelines for history teaching and…

Describes one fifth grade teacher's approach to the teaching of U.S. history. Reveals that the teacher limited breadth of coverage in favor of an approach that sought to connect themes and facts. Explains that the teacher incorporated language arts teaching, storytelling, writing assignments, and cooperative learning activities. (SG)

Interviews with fourth graders who had not yet received systematic instruction in U.S. history revealed that these students are interested in the past, concerned about human intentionality and cause-effect relationships, and able to construct coherent narrative accounts of historical events as they understand them. However, they lack an…

In most elementary schools in the United States, students get their first systematic introduction to history as a discipline and to chronological treatment of U.S. history as subject matter in fifth-grade U.S. history courses. To develop information about the knowledge and misconceptions concerning U.S. history that fifth-grade teachers can expect…

Contends that barriers to effective education can be overcome by using the community as a living laboratory for social studies learning. Discusses out-of-school learning opportunities that meet four criteria: (1) goal relevance; (2) appropriate level of difficulty; (3) feasibility; and (4) cost effectiveness. (CFR)

Summarizes consensus points reached by three university professors and three elementary school teachers who examined the Silver Burdett Ginn elementary textbook series. Explains the study's methodology. Finds textbooks constrained by the expanding environments framework, limited in multicultural coverage, and inadequate in developing themes around…

For this study, professors representing eight disciplines--science, mathematics, political science, music, literature, history, geography, and the visual arts--were asked first to review historical trends and current thinking in their disciplines and then to prepare papers about the ways in which the disciplines should be represented in the…