This post is also available on our substack. And while you’re on substack, you might want to check out this teacher, who also simplifies lesson design, for some of the same reasons we do! Do you remember the first time you had to make a PowerPoint deck? Maybe it was for a school or work… Read more »
This post comes to us from Tyler Schumacher, a fifth grade teacher in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can also read it on our Substack. My sixth year of teaching, which happened to be my first year teaching fifth grade, was supposed to be the year I finally got social studies right. I’d spent previous years… Read more »
This post is also available on our substack. In my last post – Dear Teachers: Don’t Write Curriculum. Demand It. – I argued that subject teachers need a full-blown curriculum as basic equipment for their job, and that it’s their school or district’s responsibility to provide it for them. Briefly, writing curriculum and classroom teaching… Read more »
You can also find this blog post on our Substack. I was 39 when I started teaching high school social studies. Before that, I had lectured and conducted seminar discussions in a university setting for over a decade. So, assume that I knew almost nothing about teaching. When I started, my department chair – now… Read more »
Most social studies teachers and curriculum writers think it’s very important that students work with primary sources, and we agree, with some key caveats. We’ve seen a lot of primary source based lessons that don’t go very well. Our work this year with teachers at an urban charter school in the northeast and with district… Read more »
Drew Perkins runs ThoughtStretchers, an organization committed to improving instruction on all grade levels. His url is “wegrowteachers,” which pretty much says it all! Drew’s latest podcast features Gary and Jon in conversation about knowledge and inquiry in social studies. Check it out! The ThoughtStretchers Podcast: Knowledge-Rich Inquiry With 4QM Teaching
Gary and Jon are featured in this episode of the “History Matters” podcast! We’re interviewed by Barbara Davidson of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. It’s less than twenty minutes, and is a great introduction to the Four Question Method and how and why it works in real classrooms. Ep. 7, The Four Questions That Make History… Read more »
This post originally appeared in the “In The Know” blog of our friends at the Knowledge Matters Campaign. We encourage you to visit their site and learn more about their excellent work! A few years ago, consultants came to one of our high schools to review the social studies program. They were nice people, and… Read more »
Our friends at the Knowledge Matters Campaign are now focusing on history instruction. As we know, social studies instruction in the early grades is a key to literacy. The “History Matters” campaign is aimed at making that more widely understood. In their most recent blog post, Amy Holbrook makes the case for dedicated history instruction… Read more »
We Finally Wrote A Curriculum When we first decided to try to spread the Four Question Method beyond our own classrooms, we were very naive. We figured we’d go to conferences and give workshops, and teachers would go back home and implement the method. It turned out that we could get invited to conferences and… Read more »