Portraits of Change: Using Picture Books to Engage Students in Thematic Civic Education

Abstract

This semester-long research project examined the use of social studies trade books to thematically teach about six individuals who served as change agents in the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Three of the individuals were African American men, Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, and John Roy Lynch, who took civic action to address racial discrimination faced by the Black community in the half century following the U.S. Civil War. The other three indivduals were women women, Ida B. Wells, Clara Lemlich, and Jane Addams, who challenged social inequities and injustices within their communities. Over the course of the semester-long research project, sixth-grade U.S. history students read selected trade books, examined primary sources, completed graphic organizers, and crafted writing assessments about each of the six individuals. Students demonstrated complex historical thinking, integrated economic and civic thinking, and communicated thematic ideas of systemic oppression of minorities, women, and the poor. They struggled to make connections between examples of historic oppression and contemporary examples of societal oppression.