Content-Based Instruction

Effective social studies instruction must be content based. Students must learn real facts and understand how those facts influence one another. Without a firm grounding in content, social studies devolves into nothing more than rote memorization or make believe.

Offering a content-based curriculum doesn’t have to be boring! Social studies is much more than lists of names, dates, and facts. It is, at heart, stories of real people wrapped around a mystery—and that mystery is the question WHY? Why did things happen when they did and in the way they did? And what can we learn about ourselves and our society by understanding these mysteries better?

Here are eight suggestions to make content-based instruction engaging and educational for children in grades K-8.

1. Start with a solid intellectual framework.

For this age group, that almost always means a chronological structure interwoven with geographical awareness. When mapping the curriculum, make sure the elements all fit together in a coherent fashion that makes sense to someone who is new to this material. Think of it as building a house—the chronological structure is the framing of the house. It provides support for everything that will be added to the house later.

Some social studies programs try to engage students by relying on variety—they cover the weather one week, the Civil War the next, followed by the stock market and ancient China after that. This type of approach sets students intellectually adrift. They have no mechanism to organize the information they’re learning and no way to figure out how these subjects relate to one another. And they have very little chance of retaining what they’ve learned from one week to the next without that intellectual framework. Instead, try to create a program with a narrative arc that students can follow.

2. Find the story (or stories) in the curriculum you will be using in your classroom.

The stories provide the connection points for students. They are both memorable and make the material meaningful because they happened to real people. Stories pique students’ curiosity and get them thinking about the world around them.

But simplify the story you’re trying to tell. Initially, focus on the key elements of the story so that students can grasp it easily and understand it; then flesh out the story with more details and complexity as you continue with instruction. Knowledge sticks to knowledge—once students understand the basic outline of the story, they should be able to add to the story as it develops during instruction.

Try this three-step process for using stories and making them meaningful:

Step A. Spark students’ curiosity by picking a single moment in the story to explore in more depth.

• You could ask students to figure out how we got to this place in the story, what we think came before this moment, and what we think comes after.
• You could make it personal by having students place themselves or their families within the story. Who do you think you’d be in this story and why? Did you have ancestors who could have participated in this moment?
• You could have students explore this moment through a variety of first-person accounts from people who actually lived through it.
• You could help students understand this moment better by exploring what life was like at that particular time or place. How did people live? What did they eat? Where did they sleep? What did they do for a living? What did they wear? What were they concerned about? What role did they play in making decisions about their lives? What were kids’ lives like in this time and place? Ask them how life would be different for them if they lived there.

Step B. Introduce relevant facts and flesh out students’ knowledge of this time or place. Frame the stories with discussions of how the story may or may not correctly represent the facts.

Step C. Find the story’s meaning. Every story falls into one of these categories:

• It either tells us something extraordinary (the first man on the moon, the last wagon to use the Oregon Trail, the sinking of the Titanic); or
• It is an example of a larger historical trend or phenomenon (a boat docking at Ellis Island, a farmer working in his field, children going to school).
• Either way, the story is telling us something about life in that time and place.
• If something is extraordinary, WHY is it extraordinary? How is it different from what came before or after? How is it different from what other people are doing? If something is an example, HOW is it an example? What is common about it that would have been reflected in other people’s lives? Most stories are a little bit of both—some parts of the story are examples of more general experiences while other parts of the story are different from more general experiences.
• This exercise of finding what was typical and what was unusual gives the story it’s meaning.

3. Pepper instruction with fun facts or interesting bits of trivia that students will remember and look forward to sharing with others.

Fun facts can also be used as jumping off points for more substantive discussions about topics. For example, a fun fact about New Hampshire being the second most forested state in the country can prompt an exploration of the role forests have played in New Hampshire’s history.

Educators can also work with students to debunk fun facts, because students must dive deep into the fun fact and its history to uncover the real story. For instance, New Hampshire is often credited with being the birthplace of the potato in North America, but actually the potato was probably first grown in Massachusetts. Why did New Hampshire get the credit for this fun fact? What has this fun fact meant to the people of this state over time? Did the potato become part of our state culture somehow?

4. Examine other perspectives through primary sources to get a more well-rounded view of a time and place, as well as helping students feel connected to what they’re studying.

Documents, photographs, prints, maps, and museum objects all tell their own stories. These primary sources may confirm the story you’re trying to tell, or they may challenge that story. They will almost certainly add depth and complexity to the story. If nothing else, primary sources can be used to discuss with students what has changed about society over time and what has stayed the same. The “Using Primary Sources” section of this website offers support for educators incorporating these first-person accounts into their instruction.

5. Weave in guided inquiries where possible.

Inquiry-based instruction offers a powerful avenue for student engagement. Structured around compelling and supporting questions, which are intended to be both relevant and provocative, inquiries draw on multiple subject areas across all disciplines to address complex issues. Inquiry-based instruction can be scaled up or down for all grade levels. There are also several opportunities for project-based learning through inquiry instruction, most notably National History Day–New Hampshire.

6. Make it come alive!

Use a variety of strategies to animate social studies for students, reminding them that this subject is about real people living real lives. Examples include:

• Use lesson plans that require students to be active learners
• Take field trips so students can see for themselves the stories they’ve learned about in class
• Employ audio and visual material as much as possible, since these are mediums with which students are familiar
• Gamify the material, possibly even using cosplay if you’re comfortable doing so (although be careful about not letting the make-believe world of cosplay drown out the real stories of social studies)

7. Review the facts as much as you can and in as innovative a fashion as you can.

Reminding students of the concepts and details they’ve been studying is inherent in many of the suggestions listed above, but it is essential that content is reinforced in substantive ways, in ways both large (projects, performances, summative assessments) and small (short activities, quizzes).