In July 2022, the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Geographic Alliance hosted a three-week summer institute funded by the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) as part of its "A More Perfect Union" initiative to promote a deeper understanding of United States history and culture. Eighteen K-12 educators from across the country…

Historians have long appreciated the value of the U.S. Census as a source of statistical data for studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history. However, in ways that many other primary source documents do not, the census reflects and addresses social, political, and economic issues on national, state, and community levels…

This lesson describes a geohistorical unit in which the students demonstrate their understanding of significant events in American history. The purpose of the lesson is for students to understand that the rapid population growth of the United States was made possible by the removal of Native Americans. In the first part of the lesson, students use…

The U.S. Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia from late May to mid-September 1787. The fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered to revise the Articles of Confederation but soon decided to write an entirely new document. These "Framers" were committed to forming a representative democracy, but their largely…

The objects that represent our material culture--street signs, mascots, symbols etched into stone or printed on stationery--are silent bearers of history: the past tattooed on the present. The meanings given to those objects may change from one social or culture group to another. One seemingly innocent and overlooked example in this vein is the…

The authors have had numerous opportunities to work with elementary teachers and students, but few of those experiences have been as rewarding as the We Are Wyoming project. During the 2014-2015 school year, they traveled to thirty-six fourth-grade classrooms all over the state teaching the We Are Wyoming project. The unit was a two-day integrated…

Eighth-grade students from three school districts in three small towns in Crosby County, Texas, received academic credit for working together with the biannual Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum summer travel education program. Each of the three districts radiate from a small town. They were within one county, and the museum was located in the…

In high school American history classrooms all over the country, the Civil War is a staple in the curriculum. Of course, that is to be expected given the pivotal place that the Civil War occupies in the nation's history. Indeed, it is not unusual for high school teachers to devote weeks of instruction to exploring the causes leading up to the war,…

This article describes a lesson plan that encouraged the usage of digital tools to enhance inquiry as a key tool in teaching elementary social studies. The lesson revolved around a field trip to the home of Civil War Governor Oliver P. Morton (Centerville, Indiana). The active, investigative, and questioning nature of inquiry in social studies…

Though lasting less than 200 years, large-scale rice production in South Carolina and Georgia "probably represented the most significant utilization of the tidewater zone for crop agriculture ever attained in the United States." Rice is a specialty crop where successful cultivation relied heavily upon "adaptation" to nature via…

This lesson plan is based on Suzanne Collins's book, "The Hunger Games." Katniss and Gale know about District 12 and the surrounding woods. Additionally, from television coverage, they know that there are twelve districts and the Capitol. District 13 used to exist until the rebellion. But where are these districts now that the geography…