Implementing Elementary History and Social Science: A Three-Step Plan of K-4 Curriculum Design

Abstract

Massachusetts' History and Social Science Curriculum Framework emphatically describes history and social science as a core academic subject at the elementary school level, devoting a separate section to its study in primary grades. It carries out a provision of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act for standards-based improvement, calling for more substantive study in elementary schools. The Framework's appearance should result in serious new attention being given an area of school study that, as social studies, has had little or no demonstrable academic effect and has left students largely indifferent. But teachers and schools charged with bringing existing elementary curricula into alignment with the Framework's Core Knowledge requirements in history and social science may face both a departure from what is currently done and an encounter with unfamiliar subject matter and resources. “What's a teacher to do?” The author addresses curriculum and course design by organizing some chief considerations of elementary history and social science study into a three-step plan for implementation that discusses the selection and organization of topics for elementary study, their classroom presentation, and the resources available to support the alignment effort.