This article describes the ways in which the author guided her third- and fourth-grade students in the use of historical fiction and primary and secondary sources (letters, historical newspapers, census data, photos) to think and write critically about provocative historical events. In creating their own newspaper, students learned to summarize…

Fourth grade students "know about" Pocahontas, but is this knowledge based on historical fact, or on information from the media, specifically the Disney movies "Pocahontas" and "Pocahontas II"? To address this question within the context of the New York State Social Studies curriculum and the New York State English…

Describes a local history project undertaken by fourth graders at Trumansburg Elementary School in Trumansburg, New York. Students studied the architecture of the village by visiting historical structures, sketching buildings, constructing three-dimensional models, and visiting a living history village. (MDM)

Measuring History complements the cases presented in Wise Social Studies Practices (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Yeager and Davis highlight the rich and ambitious teaching that can occur in the broad context of state-level testing. In this book, the chapter authors and I bring the particular state history tests more to the fore and examine how…