History Matters Review Tool
A Vision for Creating High-Quality K-5 History Curriculum
Students need historical content knowledge to become engaged citizens. Developed by experts in elementary literacy and social studies, this tool helps educators and publishers design curriculum and structure instruction that builds knowledge and supports literacy.
About the History Matters Review Tool
The History Matters Review Tool is designed to support states, districts, schools, and publishers in structuring elementary social studies curriculum that equips students with the knowledge and skills they need for engaged citizenship.
Created by experts in elementary literacy and social studies instruction, the tool is rooted in four big ideas:
- History is the foundation of social studies, providing the context that makes civics, geography, and economics meaningful.
- History should be taught as a story—rich with characters, conflicts, and consequences—so young students understand how events connect across time.
- Literacy and historical understanding should grow together, with reading, writing, and discussion grounded in meaningful content.
- Civics is best learned through history, as students encounter the people and debates that shaped our democratic ideals.
The History Matters Review Tool describes the core features of a comprehensive elementary social studies curriculum: sequenced knowledge building, inquiry-based learning, text-grounded discussion, and writing that develops both historical understanding and literacy. It is modeled on the highly regarded Knowledge Matters Review Tool for ELA curricula.
About the History Matters Campaign
It’s time to start talking about elementary history instruction. Our History Matters Campaign demonstrates how historical content knowledge is uniquely positioned to support literacy.
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.