Native American Heritage Month

November marks the start of Native American Heritage Month. Here are a few resources to consider for your teaching.

We Shall Remain (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/) is a PBS mini-series documenting the history of Native peoples as an essential part fhistory in the United States.

American Indians in Children's Literature, http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/

The Acatraz Proclamation (http://www.tolerance.org/activity/alcatraz-proclamation-primary-document-activity) is an activity from Teaching Tolerance which highlights the Native American Right Movement.

Reframing Our Views of Native Americans,
http://educatingondiversity.blogspot.com/2014/01/reframing-our-views-of-native-americans.html

Celebrate Indigenous People's Day

Rethink how you teach about Columbus Day. Check out these resources collected by the Zinn Education Project, http://zinnedproject.org/tag/columbus/.

More on Sojourner Truth

As my recent sections of Teaching Elementary School Social Studies are using Social Studies, Literacy, and Social Justice in the Common Core Classroom as our course text, we have discussed the marginalization of social studies in the elementary classroom. In order to expose students to individuals like Sojourner Truth, elementary teachers must purposefully integrate social studies into their comprehensive literacy program. Adding to the videos from this post (http://educatingondiversity.blogspot.com/2014/06/sojourner-truth-puppet-shows.html) students created activities/lessons to accompany an interactive read aloud using a picture book on Sojourner Truth (i.e. Sojourner Truth's Step Stomp Stride by Andrea Davis Pinkney). Below is a link to their creations.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UtyZCOdozMMcHzuRIo7QieQtA-KNcHVB2Adie5znowA/edit?usp=sharing

Recent Historical Events

As today marks the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania let us pause to remember to lives lost.

As social studies educators we know that today's news will become tomorrow's history. Edutopia has a nice resource list of 5 recent historical events to discuss with students (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/recent-historical-events-student-discussion-josh-work). The first event on the list is 9/11 attacks. Edutopia also has a number of other 9/11 teaching ideas.

Rethinking Labor Day

Here are a couple of resources for teaching about Labor Day from the 2014-2015 Planing to Change the World Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers. The first link is a listing of  50 books on labor and the other is a link to a 5th grade unit on the labor movement.

http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/detailListBooks.asp?idBookLists=104

http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/work-workers-us-labor-movement-unit-plan-5th-grade-social-studies

Our Textbooks: Are They Fair?

Adapted from Open Minds to Equality (3rd Edition), elementary social studies methods students analyzed illustrations from social studies text books. They observed who was portrayed (how inclusive are the representations) and whether the portrayals were culturally authentic. The students were also to examine the content in each text by looking at the contributions of different groups of people; examining the perspective from which the subject is presented; and looking for omissions, distortions. They were also to answer whether the struggles of each group’s (racial/ethnic, age, religious, class, gender, sexuality, and individualism vs. cooperation) fight for civil rights/equality presented?

They presented their findings orally and used charts or graphs to assist in the presentation. See the links below for examples.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29mdPfkfwGyNllKeTZKamJFM1E/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29mdPfkfwGyYWpHZG5nS3JKYlk/edit?usp=sharing

Sojourner Truth Puppet Shows

Students from my social studies methods course formulated skits about the life of Sojourner Truth. The activity was adapted from the 3rd edition of Open Minds to Equality. As part of our journey through U.S. history, we arrived at a moment in the adaptation of A People's History where the suffrage movement was mentioned. Often young people gain knowledge about Susan B. Anthony, but many do not know the role Sojourner Truth played as an abolitionist and a suffragist. Here are some of their creations.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-1itcVTg1EueFdTYmc3QUhlM2M/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-1itcVTg1EuQjhpUWMtd01jalE/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-1itcVTg1EuNnJZV1FBRlZqcWs/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-1itcVTg1EuRzhvSnJzSDhCU2c/edit?usp=sharing