Teachers value students' close reading of and text-based writing about diverse texts while eliciting their awareness of the world, privilege, and power. Carefully selected literature coupled with primary sources can bridge the classroom and society. To engage modern students in America's racialized past and present, this article guides teachers to…

Demographic trends in Texas continue to change and diversify the population; however, despite this trend, school districts and state officials continue to maintain a curriculum that is not relevant to this diverse population. Furthermore, studies show that Hispanic students, who represent 45% of the students in Texas public schools, have little…

History education rests at the junction between historical content, disciplinary literacy, and educational psychology. To understand the sources and strategies that facilitate historical thinking, more inquiries are needed. How do students respond to different historical topics, texts, and tasks? Which sources and strategies best facilitate…

This paper reports results from a six-state study of 62 USA social studies classrooms. We examined the extent to which intellectually challenging authentic pedagogy was present in study classrooms, the characteristics of classroom practice at different levels of authentic pedagogy, and how those characteristics may promote or inhibit high levels…

No Child Left Behind has profoundly limited the teaching of history over the past 10 years. Now, the Common Core State Standards offers an opportunity to reverse this decline by giving history a more prominent place in the school curriculum alongside literacy goals. Learning history and argumentative writing is key to developing analytical ways of…

Many school districts across North America have turned to a framework for curriculum design and instruction called "Understanding by Design." Included in the framework is a call for teachers to create "essential questions" that provocatively ask students to consider and learn the "big ideas and core processes within the…

This research highlights the effects of using literature and relevant curriculum to teach history in grade levels 6 through 8, and analyzes how students respond when learning complicated themes and events through the medium of historic fiction. Specifically, my research seeks to inform secondary educators concerning the use of the narrative and…

This study explored the apprenticeship of students with high-incidence disabilities into the discipline of history through mediation of a web-based instructional environment, the Virtual History Museum (VHM). Thirteen students with high-incidence disabilities spread across two co-taught classrooms participated. They engaged in two units of…

Because of its enormous significance to American history, the author wants her students to gain a rich understanding of the Battle at Gettysburg. She also would like them to make a strong emotional connection to it. She wants her students to engage with the Battle of Gettysburg on many levels--to become tangled up with the past. Her goal is to…

This study investigated social studies achievement as a result of utilizing a multimedia-based American history software program (Ignite Early American History, 2003) to augment textbook and lecture materials for seventh-grade middle school history students in an ethnically and linguistically diverse urban school district. The instructional…

This educator guide provides background information on Wilbur and Orville Wright. It also presents activities on aeronautics that provide templates for building the 1900, 1901, and 1902 Gliders and the 1903 Flyer. Activities include: (1) Early Aviation; (2) Your First Interview; (3) Your First Report; (4) Build a Model of the 1900 Glider; (5)…

It's unsettling to hear of credentialed school teachers who--ignorant of our principles and of so much more--are seduced by, and pass on, ludicrous and even subversive accounts of our history. Sandra Stotsky tells of curricula that equate white Americans with Nazis and of officials who discredit the Constitution as a license for slavery. She…