The "College, Career, and Civil Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards" guides teachers to initiate complex inquiries by sparking students' disciplinary literacy and critical analysis of rich sources. With effective scaffolding and engaging content, elementary students can explore and contextualize complex historical…

Primary teachers often struggle to find high quality literature for use with their first-grade students. Therefore, a list of award winning books was evaluated for characteristics that lend themselves to teaching reading comprehension strategies and literary elements. The Golden Kite Award, an annual award which provides a grant to the winning…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is increasingly popular in K-12 schools, not just in the United States but around the world. PBL is a great way to engage students in their learning. In this article, the author presents what PBL is and is not.

A special education co-teacher in an integrated elementary classroom describes key aspects of media literacy pedagogy for all students, including opportunities for critical analysis and creative media production. After elementary school students learned about author's craft, purpose, theme/message, three types of writing, and target audience, they…

This essay explores what it might mean to read children's literature in elementary school classrooms through a queer lens. The authors argue that because queer theory has a history as a literary theory that destabilizes normative associations among gender, sexuality, bodies, and desire, it provides a set of analytical tools classroom communities…

American publishers have published numerous children's books about Barack Obama over the past several years; most take the form of informational biographies. This article reports on a research project aimed at how these books incorporate sociohistorical narratives, particularly those related to the civil rights movement. Though the features of the…