How to Design Inquiry Lessons for Your Thematic History Class
You are committed to switching to thematically teaching your history class, you’ve read my blog post of the 5 steps to building a thematic unit, you have a unit and theme…
Build Inclusive & Antiracist US History Activities with These 10 Questions
Last month, I detailed some actionable tips for guiding you to be more antiracist and inclusive in your overall instruction and classroom, so that is a great place to start if…
5 Social Justice Projects That Will Empower Your Students
You probably went into teaching social studies because you have always been a bit of a nerd for learning the real story behind the accepted narrative and somewhat politically involved…
How to Be an Antiracist History Teacher
It’s not enough to simply mention people of color in your lectures and station activities or stress the American ideals of equality and justice. Being an antiracist educator, especially one who…
How to Effectively Build a DBQ Classroom
The document-based essay is hard. Hard to teach. Hard to learn. But that’s because it’s the culmination and synthesis of all the historical thinking skills in one. So, we leave it to…
How to Analyze Primary Sources with This Simple Strategy
The ability to analyze a primary source document effectively is perhaps the most important critical thinking skill students should have walking out of your history class. But where do you even begin…
13 Awesome Kindness Projects for Middle & High School
“Fun!” That’s the reason many students participate in their schools’ Student Council and Leadership programs. They want to have fun. Has that been true for you? Because it’s certainly been…
5 Easy Globalization Activities that Will Shock Your Students
For students who don’t know a time when cell phones didn’t have the internet, it can be tough for them to appreciate just how recently the world became so deeply interconnected. Even…
Designing & Teaching US History Thematically in 5 Steps
For the vast majority of us, our high school United States History class was taught chronologically, and the idea of a thematic structure wasn’t even one you philosophized over with…
12 Classroom Activities That Awesome Social Studies Teachers Use
Content can be a killer. It dominates everything in secondary social studies. But that doesn’t mean it has to be all drill and kill. While PBL and thematic units are my jam,…
