Instructional time spent on elementary social studies is often marginalized due to the emphasis placed on other content areas. Therefore, social studies teachers must employ meaningful instructional strategies that will engage students while promoting content acquisition. This quasi-experimental study responds to this challenge by guiding a sample…

I am a teacher educator from South Korea. In this article, I introduce two international children's books on the Korean War and a fifth grade lesson based on the books to teach the Korean War through a critical lens. Before proceeding, I first explicate why teaching about wars critically, including the Korean War, is vital.

Meaningful source work is at the heart of social studies learning, but often a tall order for elementary-aged students. In this article, the authors describe the construction and implementation of a fifth grade inquiry on the Suffrage Movement using a focused version of the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) Blueprint. Using source analysis scaffolds…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an innovative approach which attempts to comprise holistic features, focusing on the meaning and at the same time providing opportunities for purposeful language use (Dalton-Puffer, 2007). Based on the triptych language of learning, language for learning and language through learning- this program…

Adolescents are often disengaged in the learning process, being more focused on social media and self-interest than classroom content. Full circling is a process that can be used to help students collaboratively engage in learning and actively reflect on historical events--especially those that are under reported in history books. In the present…

This article introduces the fifty states project, a year-long study of the United States that uses crowd sourcing to bring authentic materials into the social studies classroom. The project started five years ago, when author Kelly McPherson decided that she wanted to have a care package sent from all 50 states to help students learn about the…

The purpose of this intrinsic, collective case study was to learn what skilled practitioners do to engage elementary students in the disciplinary literacy of reading like historians. Four high-implementation cases were selected to learn what is "possible" rather than what is "typical" behavior when teaching elementary students…

In order to be well-educated citizens in the 21st century, children need to learn computing in school. However, implementing computing education in schools faces several practical problems, such as lack of computing teachers and time in an already overloaded curriculum. A solution can be a multidisciplinary approach, integrating computing…

The purpose of this adapted grounded theory study was to identify and analyze how 23 fifth grade elementary teachers' beliefs about the U.S. and U.S. history, about the children they teach, and about the context in which they teach affected both what and how they taught. The study found that teachers' beliefs about the U.S. itself affected their…

History labs invite students to examine primary and secondary source documents related to an essential question. The sources used in a history lab should represent multiple perspectives so that students are aware of the varying accounts of and opinions about historic events. By being exposed to multiple perspectives, students also learn about…

This mixed methods study explored students' learning following an intervention unit, which focused on discipline-specific practices in elementary social studies/history. The research questions were: To what extent does students' learning in social studies/history change following their participation in a unit emphasizing disciplinary-specific…

The benefits of the flipped classroom (FC) model in students' learning are claimed in many recent studies. These benefits are typically accounted to the pedagogically efficient use of classroom time for engaging students in active learning. Although there are several relevant studies for the deployment of the FC model in Science, Technology,…

School segregation and inequity are deep-rooted realities in U.S. society. Despite historical efforts at integration, too many schools are de facto segregated, and those serving mostly students of color are routinely under-resourced when compared to those servicing mostly white students. Teachers and students can struggle to talk about this…

Using participatory action research, the first researcher functioned as co-teacher in a fifth-grade class in a large northeastern city public school. The researcher and classroom teacher guided 28 students working in book clubs to compose digital stories in response to historical fiction. The research questions were: (a) What interpretations did…

This study attempted to determine whether students participating in a summer camp learn more about a fifth grade history concept of social studies, the Reconstruction Era, via a theater arts production. Data collected for this qualitative study included pre- and post-test drawings, scripted comments, student interviews, teacher interviews, daily…