Introducing the History Matters Review Tool!

High-quality, content-rich history instruction is essential to students’ intellectual and civic growth. The new History Matters Review Tool helps states, districts, schools, and publishers develop curriculum and instruction that equip young people for engaged citizenship. Created by experts in elementary literacy and social studies, the tool establishes a vision for high-quality social studies instruction that is content-rich, inquiry-based, grounded in stories, and includes ample opportunity for discourse and writing to build knowledge.

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About the campaign

Research shows that students’ reading ability improves when they get added time for social studies—more so than when schools extend time for English language arts. Yet social studies is virtually ignored in most elementary schools.

The critical role of content knowledge in reading comprehension is well established. High-quality ELA curricula have introduced educators to the benefits of instruction rooted in content-rich texts and based on the science of reading. What if we baked evidence-based instructional practices that borrow from all we know about strong literacy instruction into coherent history and civics curricula?

As a field, we need to determine what constitutes high-quality instructional materials and aligned curriculum-based professional learning for history. We also need to find time in the already-full elementary school day to teach this important discipline.

As always, our motto is to “find the good and praise it.” We do this through school visits, podcasts, social media sharing, and blog posts.

Join the conversation and help us lift up excellent history instruction, because #HistoryMatters.

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