How Does Inquiry Engage Students in Social Studies?

1. What is inquiry?

Inquiry is the shift from “studying” to “doing” social studies. Inquiry learning provides the opportunity for students to put on the lenses of a historian, geographer, economist, or political scientist to gain knowledge and deepen their understanding of the past and the world today.

This module explores various inquiry based activities that will engage students in social studies!

2. Primary Source Sets

How does using primary sources in the elementary classroom help student reading comprehension?

One of the methods for developing disciplinary literacy is through the use of primary sources.  Primary sources should be used at both the elementary and secondary levels.  Analyzing primary sources provides students with opportunities to build background knowledge and engage with the stories of the past.

Primary source sets for elementary students have been developed and are available here: 

1. Colorado Elementary Primary Source Sets
2. The Library of Congress

Primary source sets for secondary students can be found in several places:

1. The Digital History Reader
2. The Library of Congress
3. Digital Public Library of America

Take a few minutes to peruse these resources.  

• Can you find any primary source sets for the topic you are currently teaching?
• How might you incorporate a primary source set into a unit you are already teaching?
• What strategies might you employ to engage students with the primary sources?

3. The Exodusters

What do you know about the Exodusters?

The Shores Family Near Westerville, Nebraska

African-American settlers had established farming communities in the Dakota territories and Nebraska by the end of the nineteenth century. One homesteader, I. B. Burton, encouraged other African Americans to follow him to Nebraska, arguing that blacks would never find respect as long as they lived in the South. Rather than remain in states dominated by Jim Crow, he wrote,

"it would be better to seek a healthy climate and one where peace, law and respectability reigned . . . where political murders would not occur, and where we could gain in intelligence and civility." People's Observer, Washington, D.C., January 19, 1884.

Source: Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections [RG2608-PH-0-1231]

1. What are the stories of the Exodusters?
2. Why is it important to know the stories of the Exodusters?
3. How do the stories of the Exodusters help us understand the cultural heritage of our country?

A Museum Exhibit

You are a museum curator who has been tasked with developing an exhibit that tells the story of the Exodusters.  One of the members of your Board of Directors is a descendant of an Exoduster family that settled in Nicodemus, KS. 

The director of the museum has provided 10 sources for you to begin your research on the Exodusters.  Your first task is to review the sources about the Exodusters to determine who they were, why they left the South, where they went, and what life was like for them in their new settlements.

Here is the Exodusters Primary Source Set

Here is the Exodusters Handout

Next, you will need to plan the museum exhibit using not only the provided sources, but additional sources that you find on your own.

The museum exhibit can be either a "virtual" museum or on a project board.  Here is an example of a virtual museum on the Exodusters

Information on Virtual Museums

• Virtual museum templates and the “why” for having students create them http://christykeeler.com/EducationalVirtualMuseums.html
• “How to” create a virtual museum  https://creativeeducator.tech4learning.com/2016/lessons/virtual-museum
• Virtual Museums with Google Slides (video)
• Virtual Museum templates: https://davidleeedtech.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/virtual-museum-using-google-slides-presentation/

Information on how to create a museum exhibit 

Exoduster Inquiry Debrief:

1.  How is the Exoduster lesson an exemplar of inquiry learning?

2.  How does an inquiry such as this engage your students in the work of a historian?

Nicodemus, Kansas

Nicodemus, Kansas is the only remaining western community established by African Americans after the Civil War. Having an important role in American History, the town symbolizes the pioneering spirit of these ex-slaves who fled the war-torn South in search of “real” freedom and a chance to restart their lives. This “ghost town” has since gained recognition as a National Historic Site. Source: https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ks-nicodemus/

4. 13 Days in October

Inquiries can be done with paper copies of sources in the classroom, or they can be done digitally.  For this inquiry, students are members of a team of analysts with the CIA in October, 1962. Their task is to determine what's happening in Cuba and provide recommendations to the President on how to best proceed.

Here is the 13 Days in October inquiry.  This inquiry utilizes the actual documents, intel reports, and photographs given to President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Take a few minutes to go through the inquiry.  Then, respond to the following questions:

1. How does the use of primary sources in this inquiry immerse students in this historical event?
2. How does this inquiry encourage students to be curious, to wonder, and ask questions, as opposed to a textbook?
3. How does the completion of a newscast require students to apply their historical knowledge and skills?

This inquiry was created using a Hyperdoc.   Hyperdoc templates can be found for free online.  Here is one source to get you started.

5. Korematsu v. United States

In this inquiry, students focus on the case Korematsu v. U.S. in comparison with other times in U.S. history when the government was faced with the challenge of how to protect the country during war and, at the same time, protect individual freedoms. Using primary sources, students will examine five events in which U.S. citizens were forced to give up their civil liberties in times of war, highlighting the tension between liberty and security. 

The essential questions for this inquiry are: Is our government ever justified in restricting civil liberties for the security of the nation? Was Japanese Internment constitutional?  How do the constitutional powers of the executive and legislative branches expand during wartime?

1. Watch the video as an introduction to the Supreme Court case. 
2. Review the Korematsu v. United States primary source set and answer the questions associated with the sources (Not all sources have questions associated with them).
3. Although many interned people were powerless to fight back, some did protest their treatment. Two men – Gordon Hirabayshi and Fred Korematsu – both initiated court cases that ended up before the Supreme Court. Read the these court summaries and answer:

The rest of Fred Korematsu's story...

After release from the Central Utah War Relocation Center, Fred Korematsu relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he later became a civil rights activist. In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a proclamation that officially ended Executive Order 9066 and apologized to all who had been held in the camps. In 1983, Korematsu appealed based upon new evidence. A federal judge vacated (threw out) his conviction, finding that in 1942 the government covered up evidence disproving the threat that Japanese Americans posed to the war effort. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which gave $20,000 to each surviving detainee of the camps. In 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his civil rights advocacy.

Most people today believe that Korematsu was wrongly decided. In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion for the Court stated, “Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—‘has no place in law under the Constitution (quoting Justice Jackson’s Korematsu dissent)’.” Justice Sotomayor in her dissent in Trump v. Hawaii (2018) noted, “the Court takes the important step of finally overruling Korematsu.”

Judge Marilyn H. Patel of Federal District Court in San Francisco overturned Mr. Korematsu's conviction in November 1983. In 1988, federal law provided for payments and apologies to Japanese-Americans relocated in World War II.... In her decision overturning Mr. Korematsu's conviction, Judge Patel said, "Korematsu stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees."  Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/us/fred-korematsu-86-dies-lost-key-suit-on-internment.html