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White nationalist groups have recently been at the forefront of American sociopolitical life, as demonstrated by the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical roots and various waves of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

This paper offers high school teachers age-appropriate, evocative texts and disciplinary-specific, engaging tasks organized in a guided inquiry on the KKK, America’s most prominent hate organization.

Students are positioned to utilize newly-constructed understandings to take informed action on the local, state and national level.

Recently-published research has explored late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century manifestations of the Klan, but not mid-twentieth and twenty-first century outbursts.

Contemporary American politics has been characterized by excessive, vitriolic rhetoric since the 2016 presidential victory of Donald Trump. However, Donald Trump’s brand of politics is nothing new. He is the inheritor and latest proponent for a brand of American politics that utilizes demagogic rhetoric. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of demagoguery along with the traits of demagogic rhetoric. Two activities for the high school classroom are given that look at the demagogic rhetoric employed by Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace, two of the most infamous political demagogues of the twentieth century.

With the first activity, McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within Speech” is analyzed by breaking down the speech with Gustainis’ seven traits of demagoguery (1990). Similarly in the second activity, George Wallace’s inaugural address is examined with Gustainis’ seven traits of demagoguery, and then, the authors provide a series of activities that students can do to protest the demagogic rhetoric in Wallace’s inaugural address. Finally, an appendix is provided with additional speeches from American demagogues that social studies teachers can use to teach about elements of demagoguery.

In this paper, the authors provide an overview of demagoguery along with the traits of demagogic rhetoric. Two activities for the high school classroom are given that look at the demagogic rhetoric employed by Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace, two of the most infamous political demagogues of the twentieth century.

Contemporary American politics has been characterized by excessive, vitriolic rhetoric since the 2016 presidential victory of Donald Trump. However, Donald Trump’s brand of politics is nothing new. He is the inheritor and latest proponent for a brand of American politics that utilizes demagogic rhetoric. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of demagoguery along with the traits of demagogic rhetoric. Students need to be able to critically examine demagogic rhetoric to hold elected officials accountable for their words, actions and policies.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship dynamics between the executive office and the free press; and how these dynamics have been altered under the Trump administration. Donald Trump has questioned the validity and accuracy of claims, even going as far to call some organizations (CNN and The New York Times) “fake news.” The authors discuss the historically contentious relationship between the executive office and the free press as well as the ways in which Donald Trump has altered the dynamics of this relationship.

In this paper, the authors explore the role of the free press in American politics. The authors designed two classroom-ready activities by drawing on the best teaching practices advocated for in the C3 Framework. To elaborate, both activities allow students to research and analyze arguments made by Donald Trump and challenge false claims. This enables students to engage in the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc in the C3 Framework.

The authors provide two activities that can be utilized in the high school social studies classroom to enable students to dissect American politicians’ messages. These two activities can be adapted and utilized to enable students to examine political candidate’s messages. By completing the steps of these two activities, students are better prepared to be critical consumers of political media messages and take civic action to challenge false claims.

Donald Trump has attempted to undermine the free press in the USA. He objects to stories that do not paint his administration in a positive light. This manuscript uses the media literacy position statement from NCSS and Ochoa-Becker’s framework for truth claims to explore Trump’s statements and claims.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the subtle racist rhetoric used by members of the Republican Party over the last 60 years connected to issues of race. The authors start by providing a brief history of the Republican Party and race issues. Then, the authors discuss the civic thinking skills stressed within the C3 Framework, specifically the ability to analyze politicians’ arguments. Then, the focus shifts to look at the racial literacy framework discussed by King et al. Finally, three activities are provided that enable students to grasp the subtle racist rhetoric used by some Republicans connected to issues of race.

In this paper, the authors explore race issues with members of the modern Republican Party. The authors design three classroom-ready activities by drawing on the best teaching practices advocated for in the C3 Framework. To elaborate, these activities allow students to research and analyze arguments made by some Republican politicians. This enables students to engage in the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc in the C3 Framework.

The authors provide three activities that can be utilized in the high school social studies classroom to enable students to dissect American politicians’ messages connected to race issues. These activities can be adapted and utilized to enable students to examine a political candidate’s messages, especially those that contain subtle racist rhetoric. By completing the steps of these three activities, students are better prepared to be critical consumers of political messages and to hold elected officials accountable for their words, policies and actions.

In this paper, the authors explore the role of racist political rhetoric employed by members of the Republican Party over the last 60 years. The authors use the racial literacy framework advocated for by King et al. in three classroom-ready activities. The three activities are provided to help students break down the racist political rhetoric employed by notable members of the Republican Party.

Inquiry-based instruction in social studies began as a transformative movement whose proponents included Shirley Engle, Donald Oliver, and James Shaver in the middle of the twentieth-century. Inquiry-based instruction is relevant to twenty-first century social studies and is gaining even more importance in the age of the Internet. Six specific websites are presented that can be used for student inquiry and research primarily at the middle school level. We describe ways of utilizing these sites to drive student involvement and self-assessment while also presenting criteria for selecting additional websites to use in the classroom.

Elementary classroom teachers can infuse social studies into the curriculum by integrating history, civics and English/language arts. Elementary teachers can bundle close reading, critical thinking and text-based writing within historical inquiries using accessible primary sources with engaging secondary sources.

This article reports the successes and struggles of one fourth-grade teacher's theory-into-practice interdisciplinary unit. The month-long, history-based inquiry integrated close readings of primary and secondary sources to scaffold and refine students' text-based writing about the oft-ignored interconnections between two Civil Rights icons who never met.

Findings included the import of historical inquiries within the elementary grades, students' abilities to scrutinize and extract meaning from dozens of sources and the value of revision for text-based writing, particularly its impact on the clarity, criticality and complexity of students' writing.

The inquiry's length, use of repeated readings, bulk of curricular resources and integration of revision are each comparably unique within the elementary social studies research literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of angry political rhetoric employed by George Wallace and Donald Trump. The authors start by discussing the civic thinking skills stressed within the C3 Framework, specifically the ability to analyze politicians’ arguments. Then, the focus shifts to look at angry political rhetoric within the US history. Next, the authors discuss the parallels of the angry political rhetoric employed by both Wallace and Trump. Finally, two activities are provided that enable students to grasp the convergences with the angry political rhetoric utilized by both Wallace and Trump.

In this paper, the authors explore angry rhetoric in American politics. The authors designed two classroom-ready activities by drawing on the best teaching practices advocated for in the C3 Framework. To elaborate, both activities allow students to research and analyze arguments made by George Wallace and Donald Trump. This enables students to engage in the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc in the C3 Framework.

The authors provide two activities that can be utilized in the high school social studies classroom to enable students to dissect American politicians’ messages. These two activities can be adapted and utilized to enable students to examine a political candidate’s messages, especially those that draw on angry rhetoric. By completing the steps of these two activities, students are better prepared to be critical consumers of political media messages.

In this paper, the authors explore the role of angry political rhetoric in American politics. The authors examine the parallels of political style between George Wallace and Donald Trump. Two activities are provided to help students break down the angry political rhetoric employed by these two controversial figures.