This session will present the Grade 3 Missouri History Unit, "We the Missourians: Diverse Changemakers," developed in collaboration with local teachers and aligned with the state standards and the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) Roadmap. The unit engages students in historical inquiry, exploring Missouri’s complex history through diverse changemakers using primary and customized secondary sources. "Changemakers" refers to civic participants who pursue a healthy constitutional democracy from a broad ideological spectrum. This unit highlights diverse experiences of social, racial, and economic groups in Missouri, helping young students relate this local history to their own lives and become capable changemakers.
Discover dynamic U.S. History resources enriched with primary sources, tailored for grades 3-5 and beyond. Immerse yourself in Bill of Rights Institute’s new elementary curriculum, exploring a lesson on the causes of the Civil War that fosters literacy and history. Gain practical strategies and ready-made lesson plans to reclaim valuable social studies time. This session equips teachers with tools for effective cross-curricular literacy instruction in upper elementary classrooms. Engage with BRI's innovative resources and participate in a lesson on the causes of the Civil War featuring text coding, primary sources, and informative paragraph writing.
Every elementary student in Missouri studies state history. Although popular Missouri textbooks include important information about the state's geography, institutions, explorers, politicians, and military heroes, little – if any – mention is made of the individuals whose entrepreneurial spirit led to the development of business and the growth of cities and towns throughout the state. The MO HiStory curriculum fills this gap by providing lessons based on age-appropriate biographies about 20 diverse entrepreneurial Missourians. Lessons include activities that apply skills in language arts, research, and critical thinking. Participants receive a free set of ready-to-use lessons to engage students.
Chronology - placement of historical events - is a challenge for students whose awareness of the world may be only a decade. Understanding chronology begins by identifying events in their own lives. This can be expanded if students visualize and personalize the passage of time with these three elements: draw a timeline, the math number line's social studies counterpart, to create a graphic organizer; designate it as a visual story line; and personalize the content with the first-person experiences of individuals in the students' lives. This presentation will demonstrate the strategy and engage participants in developing their own timelines.
For many teachers, primary sources serve as a new frontier. Primary sources sit at the frontier of content because they offer insights into stories of the past that might be unknown. Primary sources also sit at the frontier of pedagogy because teaching with primary sources such as documents, oral histories, cartoons, photographs, and paintings, requires innovative strategies to promote higher order thinking with these different source types. In this session, teachers will learn how to locate primary sources that uncover stories of the past while also learning engaging new strategies for teaching with them.
