This book offers the tools teachers need to get started with a more thoughtful and compelling approach to teaching history, one that develops literacy and higher-order thinking skills, connects the past to students' lives today, and meets social studies 3C standards and most state standards (grades 6-12). The author provides over 90 primary…

This article introduces the social studies field to Dorothy Heatchote's Mantle of Expert (MOE). MOE is a dramatic inquiry approach used in several subject areas and can work at all levels in the social studies curriculum. The authors go into the development of using this approach in an elementary and middle teacher education program. After sharing…

When the Texas state legislature passed a law in the 1970s allowing school districts to deny enrollment or charge tuition to illegal immigrant children, the Tyler Independent School District instituted a $1,000 tuition rate for illegal immigrant children. Sixteen undocumented children from four Mexican families in Tyler filed a class-action suit…

Integrating interdisciplinary social studies topics and social responsibility concepts into a business education class can be meaningful for student learning. The discipline of social studies includes multiple areas such as economics, history, sociology, and anthropology. Social responsibility in a business sense means that companies are concerned…

The activities the authors propose in this article offer teachers a research-based, interactive, and relevant framework of study that can effectively introduce students to the presidential election process as well as encourage students to begin thinking about what types of leaders they will vote for in the future. The exercises embody the best…

The Korean War is often given a cursory glance, if that, in U.S. foreign relations today. This article provides all the information necessary to conduct a role-play in one class period to help students understand the events of the war. Introductory and follow-up questions are also included to stimulate discussion and to connect the events of a war…

The authors of this article argue that it is the responsibility of teacher educators to provide preservice teacher candidates with the tools necessary to address issues of social justice and equity in their future classrooms. By incorporating a critical literacy approach, primary sources, role playing, and civic debates within the teaching…

Best-selling author Marcia L. Tate brings her trademark "dendrite-growing" teaching strategies to this practitioner-friendly collection of brain-compatible methods for engaging K-12 students in social studies. Included are 20 proven strategies and more than 200 grade-leveled activities for applying them. Teachers will find concrete ways to…

In order to achieve its goals, the Social Studies course should convey social events, which took place within or out of the school context, into the classroom environment. Current events can be very beneficial so as to transfer the social events into classroom environment in the Social Studies courses. In this study, semi structured interview…

Compassion, according to Nancy Rue (1991), is not pity. Compassion, Rue asserts, "involves a mixture of feeling one's kinship with others, being purely selfless (at least for the moment) and having the courage to get involved." P. M. Oliner (1983) wrote that "Prosocial content needs to show people behaving in giving and helping ways toward others.…

Discusses the role of social technology in the elementary social studies curriculum. Describes three strategies designed to enhance the social and emotional well-being of students. Explains the Magic Circle, dilemma discussions, and role playing. Suggests that such social technology methods of teaching will teach students to behave responsibly…

Students involved in acting out a role may find it hard to remember what their classmates said; student observers may focus on one roleplayer and not the others. This causes problems in the discussion stage of the roleplay. Solution: videotape the roleplaying situation. An example is provided. (RM)

Presents a lesson designed for secondary economics classes. Students role play adults in selected occupations, create personal budgets, and make investment and savings decisions. Student directions and questions are included. (CFR)

Foreign Currency Exchange is the largest business in the world. The New York Institute of Finance estimates that somewhere around 1.5 trillion dollars changes hands every 24 hours. The trading of international currencies has made overnight millionaires. No other marketplace in the world can give a person more significant opportunity to make money…

The League of Women Voters/Tallahassee responded to an opportunity to research the concerns of Florida's judiciary following the disrupted general election of 2000. It received a grant for the Judicial Independence Project, a project supported by a grant from the Program on Law and Society of the Open Society Institute, from the League of Women…