In their collective introduction to the book Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History, Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Samuel Wineburg write provocatively about the importance of teaching practices. “The process of communicating knowledge about the past,” they write, “is an epistemological and cultural act that conveys deep and sometimes unintended messages.” When teachers make choices about methods, assessments, assignments, and resources they not only teach their students about historical meaning, but also about “the nature of understanding” and students’ “own role in making historical knowledge.” Each curricular and instructional decision contains profound “messages” about human agency, about how change happens, about narrative and argument.

In other words, how we teach history to our students--at any level--is as important as what we teach. We can teach students to become passive consumers of information or empower them to become critical consumers and producers of knowledge and understandings. When we engage in teaching that fosters critical thinking skills in the social studies and provide opportunities for students to engage with non-fiction texts in reading, writing, speaking and listening, we are teaching our students skills they will need to become active, engaged adults.

The New York State Learning Standards in Social Studies specifically calls for students to acquire the skills needed and then to engage in the process of historical inquiry. None of this can happen without thinking about the reading and writing skills that are the focus of so much of today's education. We propose, however, that teachers should provide opportunities for students to go beyond comprehending non-fiction text and to begin to engage in critical literacy practices.

Drawing upon drama based pedagogies and integrated history content-based literacy instruction, this section aims to provide K-5 teachers with resources to help them integrate critical history instruction into their classrooms. The idea is to help teachers get students to construct richer understandings of past and present.  And, in order to assist teachers in planning units of study that are rich in understandings, content, and skills, we advocate using the backwards planning approach of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).