Decades of curriculum research have uncovered a persistent trend: white people are depicted as dominating the history of the United States, whereas communities of color and their experiences are omitted or misrepresented in social studies textbooks and curriculum standards. The message the resulting curriculum sends to children is that the United…

First-grader students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing during Reading, Writing, and Social Studies classes. Students scrutinized secondary sources, which were largely biographies of Lincoln, to build their…

Disciplinary literacy instruction during kindergarten through second grade enables students to begin developing facility with consuming, producing, and learning from texts in academic disciplines across their school careers and for full civic participation. Extant intervention studies and descriptions of practice in the primary grades offer…

First graders engaged in an extended historical inquiry. Close readings of secondary and primary sources evoked rich class discussion. Scaffolding directed students' scrutiny of secondary sources for historical gaps; they ably detected source and intent within the primary sources. Students articulated newly constructed understandings through…

History is alive! That is one of the important messages that teacher Barbara Knighton communicates to her students as she develops engaging stories about changes in farming, government, clothing, or transportation, using timelines as her basis. In this article, the authors describe how Knighton constructs social studies units for her first and…

Chronological thinking is one of the historical and social sciences analysis skills of the California History-Social Science Standards. The study of history is the study of change. This unit addresses different types of change from "now" to "then." From the community, including types of transportation, to the school, children…

This article describes a project that integrated technology into a classroom unit as part of a project (Project MEET) sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education. The project goals were linked to the Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework that focuses on the differences between work and play, and was based on the use of…

Research on restructuring domain-specific knowledge suggests that inferences made by a learner are based more on what and how concepts are structured and organized in particular domains than on the age of the learner. In this view, it is possible for children to operate more expertly in a particular area than could be explained by global stage or…

This volume presents suggested curriculum guidelines for an effective bilingual program, with specific focus on instruction in health, science, social studies, New Mexico history, English as a second language, and multiculturalism, at the first grade level. The philosophy of the program views bilingual education as a vehicle and pedagogical tool…

This handbook outlines the grade 1 course entitled "People at Home and at School." A statement of the California philosophy of history-social studies education precedes the handbook's three sections. The first two sections present major goals of the overall program, an overview of social studies content for grades K-6, and a chart of…