In many elementary classrooms, Thanksgiving is celebrated by donning homemade Pilgrim hats, grocery bag vests, and colorful construction-paper headdresses, as students join together to reenact the "first" Thanksgiving with a mock feast. Students compose journal entries on the topic, "what I am thankful for." These typical Thanksgiving activities,…

All too often, students see history only as a product--a massive collection of unrelated names and events, dates and places. But if students are presented with history as a process, they can become aware of how the product (written history) is created. Oral history is an excellent means for students to gather information and produce historical…

In this article, the authors describe how they used student's complaints about limited salad choices in the cafeteria as the focus of a class project. Following steps of the Project Citizen protocol of the Center for Civic Education, the authors facilitated students' efforts, which included researching the problem, talking with adult…

In this article, the authors discuss how to inspire young learners to become agents of change and how to engage them in participatory citizenship. They outline a unit of study in which third grade students learn about notable agents of change. Young learners discover that they can be agents of change right in their own community through a…

In this article, the author describes a disability awareness unit of study that he designed for his third-grade students. The unit for both students and teachers allowed participants to spend one school day in a wheelchair following a structured plan that would serve to standardize the experience. Each student would stay in the wheelchair from…

Many international schools embrace social studies education, and service learning embedded within the social studies curriculum is often the norm rather than the exception. Helping students help others in any setting is powerful. In a richly diverse venue there are added benefits. The "third-culture kids" attending international schools possess…

Mental flexibility emerges as an essential skill for preparing young learners for global competency and denotes the ability to learn from and about different perspectives. Students who are regularly exposed to "alternative approaches to a wide range of scientific, social and everyday problems" appear to be more receptive to alternative solutions…

This article provides an inside look at Barbara Knighton's classroom teaching. She uses big ideas to guide her planning and instruction and gives other teachers suggestions for adopting the big idea approach and ways for making the approach easier. This article also represents a "small slice" of a dozen years of collaborative research,…

The authors review an eight-year collection of journal articles from "Theory and Research in Social Education," "The Social Studies," "Social Education," and "Social Studies and the Young Learner". Their research yielded 37 articles, of which 20 were published in "Social Studies and the Young Learner" from 2000 to 2008. The authors describe three…

There never seems to be enough time to teach everything that administrators, policy advocates, parents, legislators, and the general public think should be addressed in the elementary classroom. Each year, elementary teachers are asked to add more and more to their already crowded curriculum. Add to this the pressures of state standards and making…

In twenty years of teaching, the author has never been involved in a project that sparked as much enthusiasm from students, parents, the administration, and other teachers as the Entrepreneur Fair. In an effort to challenge students to become entrepreneurs, the author developed a one-day market called the Entrepreneur Fair at Stonewall Elementary…

Early on, children learn they can not have everything they desire. In this article, the authors discuss how to teach students to prioritize and help them make better choices. The authors suggest teachers to make a list of items that students desire, and then divide those items into two categories--(1) wants; and (2) needs ("needs" being things…

Today's young students, when they grow to be adults, will have to make decisions the consequences of which will impact their lives and the lives of others. As consumers, they will need to understand that they can't have everything they want. They will have to make spending, savings, and investing decisions that benefit their own families over the…

In this article, the author describes how her first grade class embarked on a journey of learning through a unit of study about local food markets. The study was a rich exploration of the cultural diversity of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as an introduction to basic concepts about economics. Through their trips to a farm and…

Children's economic reasoning follows a developmental sequence in which their ideas about money and other basic economic concepts are forming. Even children in the early primary grades can learn some basic economics and retain understanding of economic concepts if they are taught in developmentally appropriate ways. Given how important economic…