History Nerdfest 2018: Encouraging Historical Thinking Through Picture Books
It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.
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I’ve always been a fan of Dr. Dan Krutka. While in the Kansas area and now at the University of North Texas, Dan has always been a huge supporter of social studies and integrating tech. And the cool thing is he’s here at #ncss18 talking about how to use picture books to support elementary social studies best practices. Even better? My new friend Dr. Michelle Bauml from Texas Christian University is here as co-presenter.
I’m smarter just being in the same room.
They start with the basics. Why should we be using picture books to help teach social studies?
- emphasis on math and reading so very little for social studies specific instruction
- textbooks are old and boring
- need for teaching introducing historical thinking to kids
- lots of children’s lit already being used as teaching tools
We moved on to a brand new site for me called the Historical Thinking Project. Created by the Canadian government, the project highlight six historical thinking concepts and a ton of resources. The concepts are especially useful because we can use them to help develop essential questions around the content in picture books.
- Establish historical significance
- Use primary source evidence
- Identify continuity and change
- Analyze cause and consequence
- Take historical perspectives, and
- Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations.
Dan and Michelle simple steps to designing a lesson using the concepts and book content: Read more