EDU 5120 | Elementary Social Science

Welcome & Course Mission

From learning standards to becoming a reflective educator

Welcome to EDU 5120: Theory and Practice of Teaching Elementary Social Science. I’m Dr. McGarvey, and I look forward to working with you as you grow into confident, thoughtful, and effective teachers of history and the social sciences in elementary classrooms.

What we will study

This course is designed to deepen your understanding of the K–5 History–Social Science standards, including the integration of history, geography, economics, and civics/government. You will unpack each grade-level focus while exploring how to cultivate critical thinking and analytical skills in young learners.

We will investigate the philosophical and historical foundations of social studies instruction and examine its evolving role in the elementary curriculum. You will work with specialized strategies, materials, and resources designed to support all learners.

How we will learn

EDU 5120 is collaborative and interactive by design. You will learn from course content, model lessons, inquiry, children’s literature, standards analysis, and the collective experiences of your peers.

The goal is not simply to complete assignments. Every activity is intended to move you closer to becoming a reflective, research-informed, and capable educator who can plan meaningful social science learning and meet California Teacher Performance Expectations.

Our semester-long question

How can elementary teachers use history and the social sciences to help children understand their world, evaluate evidence, consider multiple perspectives, ask better questions, and participate thoughtfully in a democratic society?

Why Social Science Matters

Elementary social science belongs at the center of the curriculum

A central question in EDU 5120 is why History–Social Science has often been marginalized in elementary classrooms, and why it deserves a central role. This course approaches social science as more than a collection of names and dates. It is a place where students learn to read closely, ask questions, weigh evidence, reason about cause and consequence, understand people and places, and participate responsibly in civic life.

The crisis of marginalization

Elementary schedules often place intense pressure on tested subjects, which can push History–Social Science to the edges of the day. When that happens, students lose a powerful context for literacy, discussion, evidence, geography, civic understanding, and meaningful knowledge-building.

The danger of “coverage”

When social science becomes a march through facts, vocabulary, worksheets, or textbook pages, students may remember isolated information without learning how historians and social scientists think. The goal is not simply to know more facts, but to use knowledge to interpret, explain, question, and reason.

The civic purpose

Children are already members of families, classrooms, communities, and a larger democratic society. Elementary social science gives them developmentally appropriate ways to understand rules, institutions, communities, economic choices, historical change, geographic relationships, and the responsibility to make reasoned decisions based on evidence.

Social science strengthens literacy

History–Social Science naturally asks students to read informational text, examine primary and secondary sources, interpret maps and timelines, discuss claims, write explanations and arguments, and support ideas with evidence. In this course, literacy and social science are treated as mutually reinforcing rather than competing priorities.

From Words to Wisdom

Unpacking the standards

Unpacking standards is one of the most important steps in turning curriculum into meaningful instruction. Standards are often written as dense sentences. Inside each one are expectations about what students must do, what they must know, and how deeply they must think. The goal is to move from “covering content” to intentional planning.

1 • Skills

Identify the verbs

Skills are the observable actions required of students. Look for verbs such as analyze, compare, explain, justify, describe, trace, interpret, or construct.

Circle or highlight the verbs.
Ask: “What does the student actually have to do?”
Make sure classroom tasks require the same kind of action.

2 • Concepts

Identify the nouns

Concepts are the topics, vocabulary, content, people, places, systems, events, ideas, or sources students must understand in order to perform the skill.

Highlight nouns and noun phrases.
Ask: “What knowledge is essential before students can do the skill?”
Plan the background knowledge and vocabulary that make thinking possible.

3 • Depth of Knowledge

Determine the thinking

Depth of Knowledge describes how deeply students must think, not how hard a topic feels. It helps teachers align instruction and assessment with the rigor intended by the standard.

Identify the likely DOK level.
Match the task to the level of reasoning.
Remember that more questions do not automatically mean deeper thinking.

DOK 1 • Recall

Facts, definitions, labels, identification, and procedures.

DOK 2 • Skills & Concepts

Apply information, compare, classify, summarize, interpret, and explain how or why.

DOK 3 • Strategic Thinking

Reason, investigate, critique, cite evidence, formulate explanations, and defend conclusions.

DOK 4 • Extended Thinking

Connect ideas across sources, design, create, analyze over time, and apply learning in new contexts.

The alignment test

After unpacking a standard, ask three questions: Are students learning the concepts deeply enough to use them? Are tasks asking students to perform the actual skill named in the standard? Does the level of thinking in instruction and assessment match the expected Depth of Knowledge?

Collaborative Standards Study

A recurring cycle: unpack, research, teach, reflect

Rather than treating the standards as a document to read once, we use them as a recurring object of study. Teacher candidates work collaboratively to investigate grade-level standards and turn them into meaningful instruction.

The standards cycle

Across the course, groups repeatedly move through a common cycle. This gives candidates practice interpreting standards, locating supporting content, deciding what matters instructionally, and communicating that learning to colleagues.

Core question: What would a child have to know, do, and think in order to demonstrate this standard?

Assign

A grade-level standard or cluster of standards becomes the group’s focus.

Unpack

Identify skills, concepts, and the likely Depth of Knowledge. Clarify what mastery actually looks like.

Research

Use the California History–Social Science Framework and other credible resources to deepen the content, context, vocabulary, and instructional possibilities.

Present

Teach the standard to your colleagues. Explain the essential content, conceptual ideas, likely student misconceptions, and promising instructional approaches.

Apply & Reflect

Connect standards work to inquiry, literacy, assessment, model lessons, and ultimately the unit plan.

Language, Culture & Historical Inquiry

Supporting English learners by building from what students already know

English learners are not entering social science classrooms without knowledge. They bring family histories, cultural knowledge, languages, experiences with migration and community, and perspectives that can deepen the study of history. Effective instruction supports access to academic language while also treating students’ backgrounds as resources for inquiry, comparison, interpretation, and discussion.

Asset 1

Begin with background knowledge

Before introducing a new historical topic, uncover what students already know and what connections they can make. Prior knowledge may come from family stories, another country, community experiences, literature, media, or previous schooling.

Use discussion, KWL charts, semantic webs, and quickwrites.
Treat initial ideas as starting points for deeper understanding, not simply as errors to correct.
Return to the original chart later so students can see how their thinking changed.

Asset 2

Connect the personal to the historical

Family and community histories can provide an accessible entry into larger historical themes such as migration, change over time, work, technology, culture, and community.

Use interviews, family or community stories, artifacts, photographs, and oral histories.
Move from familiar experiences to broader historical patterns and concepts.
Give students alternatives when family-history topics may be private, painful, or inaccessible.

Asset 3

Make input comprehensible and multimodal

Students understand more when history is not limited to dense text. Images, maps, music, artifacts, read-alouds, demonstrations, and role-playing provide multiple avenues into historical meaning.

Pair text with visuals, objects, timelines, maps, and teacher modeling.
Read important passages aloud with expression and pause to explain context.
Use concrete examples before asking students to reason about abstract concepts.

Strategy 4

Scaffold participation before independence

Creative inquiry tasks still require structure. Students need explicit support for how to discuss, read sources, take notes, use graphic organizers, and complete academic tasks.

Model the task before asking students to do it independently.
Use small groups of two to four so students can rehearse ideas before whole-class discussion.
Teach collaboration routines and respectful interaction directly.

Strategy 5

Teach language through meaningful history

Social science instruction asks teachers to attend to three things at once: the historical content, the language students need to discuss and write about it, and the academic processes needed to complete the task.

Model academic language in context rather than separating language from content.
Use recasting, clarification questions, prompts, and sentence starters to support communication.
Explicitly teach note-taking, source analysis, discussion, and evidence-based writing.

Asset 6

Use diverse perspectives to strengthen historical thinking

A classroom with students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds can enrich historical inquiry because students may notice different assumptions, connections, and perspectives. The goal is not to ask students to represent an entire culture, but to make room for many ways of seeing and questioning the past.

Compare primary sources written from different viewpoints.
Ask who is represented, who is missing, and how perspectives differ.
Emphasize human agency, not only victimization, when studying historically marginalized groups.

An asset-based lens for planning

When planning for English learners, do more than ask, “What support does this student need?” Also ask what knowledge, language, experiences, and perspectives the student can contribute to the inquiry. Chapters 5 and 13 repeatedly show that strong social science teaching begins with students, then connects their experiences to larger historical questions and evidence.

What might students already know that can help them enter this topic?

What visual, oral, linguistic, or collaborative supports will make the evidence accessible?

How can students’ different perspectives make the class’s historical understanding richer?

Major Learning Experiences

Three assignments, one instructional design journey

The major assignments build toward your ability to plan standards-aligned, inquiry-based elementary social science instruction. Use the cards below to open the full directions, rubric, resources, and interactive planning builder for each assignment.

Literature Study

Children’s Literature Study

Connect a children’s book to History-Social Science standards, themes, essential questions, literacy, discussion, and meaningful application.

Builds toward: using literature as part of the Developing Content, Concepts, and Skills section of your Unit Plan.

Open Literature Study

Inquiry Assignment

Focused Inquiry Lesson

Develop a focused inquiry question, gather primary and secondary source evidence, scaffold source reading, and plan how students will synthesize evidence and communicate conclusions.

Builds toward: the focused inquiry required within your Unit Plan.

Open Inquiry Assignment

Unit Plan • 30 points

Inquiry-Based Unit Plan

Bring standards, questions, literature, primary-source inquiry, disciplinary thinking, literacy, assessment, and informed action together into a coherent instructional unit.

Brings together: the Literature Study, Inquiry Assignment, and the larger course mission.

Open Unit Plan

How the assignments connect

Literature helps students enter the content and perspectives. Inquiry helps students investigate evidence. The Unit Plan organizes those experiences into a purposeful sequence driven by standards and meaningful questions.

Course Materials & Resources

Know what each resource does

These documents are related, but they do different jobs. The Content Standards identify what students should know and be able to do. The California Framework explains how those standards fit into a coherent grade-level story and offers instructional guidance. Analysis Skills identify the disciplinary thinking students practice while learning the content. The NCSS Themes provide broad conceptual lenses that connect topics across time and place. The C3 Framework organizes inquiry, evidence, disciplinary thinking, communication, and informed action. Teaching California Primary Source Sets provide ready-to-use, grade-appropriate evidence and literacy supports. Use the model lesson collections to see what these ideas can look like in actual instruction.

Doing History

Levstik, Linda S. & Barton, Keith C. (2023). Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools, Sixth Edition. Routledge.

Use it for: the research and pedagogical foundation of the course, especially inquiry, children's historical thinking, evidence, perspective, and meaningful classroom practice.

STD

California History-Social Science Content Standards

The standards are the required learning expectations. They tell you the grade-level history, geography, economics, civics, and government content students are expected to learn.

Use them for: choosing the exact standard for a lesson or unit, writing it verbatim in your planning, unpacking its skills and concepts, and checking that instruction and assessment are aligned to the required learning.

Open Content Standards

California History-Social Science Framework

The Framework is not a second set of standards. It explains and expands the standards by providing grade-level context, instructional guidance, key questions, disciplinary connections, access and equity guidance, and suggestions for teaching.

Use it for: understanding the larger story behind a standard, identifying important context and concepts, finding guidance for age-appropriate instruction, and strengthening the rationale and sequence of a unit.

Open CA Framework

Ten National Social Studies Themes

The NCSS themes are broad conceptual lenses, such as Culture, Time, Continuity and Change, People, Places and Environments, Power, Authority and Governance, and Civic Ideals and Practices. They help students see connections beyond a single fact or event.

Use them for: identifying the larger ideas a book, lesson, or unit addresses, developing essential or compelling questions, and connecting specific California content to enduring social studies concepts.

Open the Ten Themes

History and Social Science Analysis Skills

These are the disciplinary thinking skills students use while learning the content standards. In the elementary grades they include chronological and spatial thinking, research and evidence, point of view, and historical interpretation.

Use them for: deciding what students will actually do as historians and social scientists, such as sequencing events, using maps, distinguishing fact from opinion, considering evidence and perspective, explaining cause and effect, and connecting past and present. Pair these skills with the content standard rather than teaching them in isolation.

Open Analysis Skills

Teaching California Primary Source Sets

Teaching California provides curated primary source sets designed for classroom use. Each set includes approximately 6–10 primary sources excerpted for an appropriate grade level, with secondary-source context to help students understand and interpret the evidence.

Use them for: building source-based lessons and inquiries without having to locate and adapt every document yourself. Each collection also includes brief teacher background information and a literacy strategy aligned with California ELD Standards and Common Core ELA Standards. These sets are especially useful when you need age-appropriate evidence for your Inquiry Assignment or the Developing Content, Concepts, and Skills section of your Unit Plan.

Browse Primary Source Sets CA ELD Standards Common Core ELA Standards

C3 Framework: The Inquiry Arc

The College, Career, and Civic Life Framework helps teachers organize social studies around a cycle of inquiry. It does not replace California standards. Instead, it provides a process for investigating standards-based content through questions, disciplinary concepts, evidence, conclusions, and informed action.

Use it for: designing your Inquiry Assignment and shaping an inquiry-based unit. Start with a compelling question, determine what disciplinary knowledge students need, select and evaluate sources, then have students use evidence to communicate conclusions and, when appropriate, take informed action.

C3 Overview Full C3 Framework PDF

Dimension 1: Developing Questions

Develop compelling and supporting questions and plan an inquiry that gives students a reason to investigate.

Explore Dimension 1

Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Concepts

Use the tools and ways of thinking from civics, economics, geography, and history to investigate the questions.

Explore Dimension 2

Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources & Using Evidence

Help students examine sources, judge their usefulness, identify evidence, and build claims from that evidence.

Explore Dimension 3

Dimension 4: Communicating Conclusions & Taking Action

Students synthesize what they learned, communicate evidence-based conclusions, and consider informed action.

Explore Dimension 4

C3 Inquiry Model Lessons

The C3 Teachers Inquiry Design Model collection shows how teachers turn compelling questions, supporting questions, sources, formative tasks, and summative performance tasks into coherent inquiries.

Use it for: studying examples before designing your own inquiry. Look at how the questions progress, what sources are selected, how students use evidence, and how the final task requires students to answer the compelling question.

Browse C3 Inquiries

CA+

California Model Lessons & Curriculum Resources

California's History-Social Science resource pages collect standards-aligned instructional materials and links to lesson collections from state and partner organizations.

Use them for: locating model lessons, primary sources, instructional strategies, and curriculum ideas that you can evaluate and adapt for your grade level and standard. Use models as examples, not as substitutes for checking alignment yourself.

Browse California HSS Resources Instructional Materials

We Are California Model Curricula

This state-supported collection includes model curricula for Native American Studies, Cambodian American Studies, Hmong History and Cultural Studies, and Vietnamese American Experiences. The curricula include lesson plans, primary sources, planning resources, instructional strategies, and professional learning materials.

Use it for: locating culturally responsive California-focused curriculum, expanding perspectives represented in your instruction, finding primary sources and model lessons, and studying how state standards can be developed through richer community and cultural histories.

Open We Are California

LIT

Children’s Literature Database

A course resource for connecting high-quality children’s literature with History-Social Science content, themes, standards, and instructional possibilities.

Use it for: exploring possible books for your Literature Study and seeing how literature can serve as a source for background knowledge, perspective, discussion, and application.

Open Literature Database

A simple way to remember the difference

Standards tell you what students must learn. Framework tells you the larger instructional story. Analysis Skills tell you how students think within the discipline. Themes tell you the enduring ideas. Primary Source Sets give students evidence to investigate. C3 tells you how to organize inquiry. Model lessons show you what thoughtful implementation can look like.