Schools must develop educational interventions that assist students with disabilities to develop skills that are useful inside and outside of school (Fletcher et al., 2018). In this study, I will investigate how integrating visual arts into core social studies content benefits high school students within a self-contained special education classroom. To accomplish this, I have used art critique and creation in conjunction with the students' established curriculum. As a group, students critiqued artwork that pertains to social studies unit topics to create a deeper meaning of the content and develop their understanding. Individually, students created their own artwork based on social studies unit topics to explore their own understanding of the content and express their learning and knowledge. My goal was to explore how integrating the visual arts into a social studies curriculum will assist in students' understanding and retention of a topic through the use of a developed common language and use visual cues for recall and content development. This action research study used qualitative methods for data collection and included input from students and an analysis informed by social constructivism to develop effective methods of integrating visual arts into U.S. history content. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]