This study examined the 4th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments (history, geography, and civics) and 3rd- and 4th-grade social studies standards from nine randomly selected states and organized the content around three global concepts (conflict, movement, discovery) and six specific concepts (war, rebellion,…

"The Problem We All Live With" is one of Norman Rockwell's most famous, and provocative, images. First printed in the January 14, 1964, issue of "Look" magazine, the image features an approximately six-year-old African American girl walking. She is wearing a white dress, white socks and white shoes. Her hair is parted in neat…

In Our Global Village is a project that originated when Barbara Cervone of What Kids Can Do traveled to Kambi Ya Simba, Tanzania, and spent time with the students at Awet Secondary School. Although the students were skeptical, Cervone persuaded them to write a book about their village, their lifestyles, and the challenges that the inhabitants…

Most students today are not able to distinguish between the notion of "race" as a social construct and the pernicious, false belief that "race" is a biological reality. The American Anthropological Association has adopted a policy that the word "race" should always be put in quotation marks because, as a social and…

A reenactment is the recreation of a scene, time period, or event as authentically as possible by a group of people. An educational reenactment takes the in-depth cultural experience of participating in a reenactment and joins it with the educational structure of a social studies classroom. Reenactments can be as varied as historical…

The popular reality television show "Amazing Race" involves participants searching for clues and completing tasks as they progress on a journey all over the world. Inspired by the show, the author incorporated some of the tasks from "Amazing Race" with geocaching, a game in which participants use a Global Positioning System…

This article describes how a biology teacher's search for a cross-curricular project in science, math, history, and environmental science, that would help her students connect what they were learning in the classroom to their everyday life, resulted in an ongoing stewardship project. Working together with the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program…