Elementary Social Studies Resources

The following are resources to support schools and educators with goals of increasing the amount of time spent implementing social studies instruction to teach and model core skills as well as provide access to high quality instructional resources.

The Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People is an annual project of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the CBC running since 1972. This bibliography features K-12 annotated titles published in the previous calendar year that are exceptional books for use in social studies classrooms, selected by social studies educators.

This guide provides excerpts from Becoming Integrated Thinkers: Case Studies in Elementary Social Studies, a publication from the National Council for Social Studies©, to support elementary teachers in the integration of social studies across the curriculum.

C3 Teachers – Inquiries by Grade Level

C3 Teachers aims to empower teachers as they wrestle with the big ideas and instructional implications of the C3 Framework.

Below are inquiries found on the C3 Teachers website listed by grade level.

EconEdLink Classroom Resources

EconEdLink is brought to you by the Council for Economic Education. CEE is the leading organization in the United States that focuses on the economic and financial education of students from kindergarten through high school—and we have been doing so for nearly 70 years.

The Internet-based lessons are targeted for K-12 teachers and their students. Many of the lessons include a teacher’s version as well as a student’s version. Each of the lessons are designed to be delivered in a variety of formats and classroom settings.

EDSITEment!

EDSITEment is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for the Humanities that offers free resources for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality K-12 humanities education materials in the subject areas of history and social studies, literature and language arts, foreign languages, arts, and culture.

Everyday Inquiry in Elementary Social Studies

Everyday Inquiry in Elementary Social Studies offers a series of videos to support elementary teachers as they infuse social studies instruction with elements of inquiry.

History’s Mysteries – Historical Inquiry for Elementary Classrooms

History’s Mysteries is a K-5 history curriculum that helps elementary educators re-center history in their classrooms by providing easy-to-use, adaptable, and engaging curriculum that focuses on research-based practice in historical inquiry.

Nebraska Historical Society Virtual Field Trips

Nebraska Historical Society provides experiences with compelling questions and artifacts through virtual field trips.

Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation

Nebraska Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) is a statewide program that helps K-12 students and teachers develop an awareness and understanding that agriculture is their source of life’s necessities.

KidCitizen

In KidCitizen’s interactive episodes, children explore civics and government concepts by investigating primary source photographs from the Library of Congress. They also connect what they find with their daily lives.

Open Social Studies

This curriculum was built to help teachers in K-6 schools regularly enact powerful and authentic social studies in their classrooms that will also meet essential literacy goals.

PBS Learning Media – Elementary Social Studies

Discover exciting resources and methods for teaching social studies to students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in elementary Social Studies.

Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology (OET) created the Smithsonian Learning Lab to inspire the discovery and creative use of its rich digital materials—millions of images, recordings, and texts.

Unicam Kids

Unicam Kids is a civic education resource produced by the Clerk of the Nebraska Legislature ‘s Unicameral Information Office.

For free copies of the corresponding Unicam Kids! guide, contact the Unicameral Information Office at (402) 471-2788 or uio@leg.ne.gov.