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Notable Social Studies Trade Book (NSSTB) lists include books selected annually by the Book Review Committee of the National Council for the Social Studies in conjunction with the Children’s Book Council. These lists are excellent resources for teachers who use children’s literature to support social studies instruction in their classrooms. We report our analysis of award-winning titles for primary grades published from 2001-2011. Biographies and books that address topics about families are featured as a starting place for primary grades teachers to begin incorporating NSSTB into their social studies instruction. We conclude by suggesting ways for primary grade teachers to utilize the book lists each year.

The era of high stakes testing often puts pressure on teachers and administrators to deemphasize creative activities, especially those involving the social studies, art, and music. Teaching strategies not perceived as directly related to improving test scores are often marginalized. Environmental text is essential for encouraging overall learning competencies in general and social studies in particular. Using environmental text such as real estate booklets can be helpful in generating learning activities in the social studies. Real estate booklets are colorful, rich in content, and readily available at no expense. Methods for integrating music and art strategies are presented also.

This chapter describes a unique model used by one teacher educator to provide an authentic process for assessing student learning and observing how students represent themselves as teachers to their families. The student-led parent conference is a means of making learning more viable and more intrinsically motivating because it incorporates elements of choice and a real audience for evaluation. A powerful by-product is the credibility it can give to at least one recommendation university professors often make about what classroom teachers should do.

This book was organized to illustrate some of the affordances and constraints of contrasting methodological approaches to qualitative research on teaching (who provides the information, how the information is gathered, and how the findings are represented). The differing perspectives, methods, and forms of representation in the included studies complement one another to enrich our insights about teachers, as they progress from applying to teacher education programs through various stages of completion of these programs to continuing their development as professionals. In addition to these methodological insights, however, the chapters offer a variety of substantive findings that will inform the work of teacher educators, including many that reinforce or otherwise connect with one another.

Teacher assessments are becoming increasingly popular in public school improvement plans. These assessments may inadvertently diminish the amount of time and attention teachers perceive they can devote to a traditionally non-tested subject such as social studies. Would teachers’ orientations toward social studies change in a manner that would elevate its status if an assessment resulted in the teachers recognizing they have more direct say over the manner in which they allocate their instructional time? In this paper, we explore this and other questions to investigate how elementary teachers imagine social studies in an age of teacher assessments.

In order to comply with the new Common Core standards, it is imperative teachers, particularly those at the elementary levels, incorporate English/Language Arts (ELA) in their social studies classes. These reading, writing, speaking, and listening foci, through the use of informational texts, necessitate strategies to help students meet these standards. They also help students learn social studies content and gain historical understanding. Teachers can meet these standards through an adapted Jigsaw strategy using primary source materials. We review a modified Jigsaw strategy; we call a “Source-Focused Jigsaw.” An aspect of this type of Jigsaw is its allowance of students to focus on the similarities and differences between multiple documents, which is a specific emphasis of the Common Core Standards. This strategy allows young learners to think like a historian and to understand various sources often contain different information. They also learn multiple sources may be necessary to for decision-making. The authors provide lesson examples of its use with social studies informational texts and ELA.