This book provides teachers, librarians, and education methods professors with strategies, lesson plans, and activities that enable them to use literature as a springboard to social studies thematic instruction. With the amount of time and resources allocated to teaching social studies being significantly reduced, social studies lessons need to be incorporated into other subjects. Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting Social Studies Back in the K–8 Curriculum offers the tools to teach students social studies concepts that are increasingly relevant and essential in today's diverse, globalized world—lessons that are vital in order to prepare students to think critically and participate in our multicultural democracy. Providing information that elementary and middle school teachers and librarians, district-level curriculum directors and principals, staff developers, and social studies and literacy methods professors will find extremely useful, this book uses the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)/Children's Book Council (CBC)'s current and past lists of Notable Books at the elementary and middle school levels to offer easy-to-follow lesson plans that integrate social studies instruction with reading and language arts. The lesson plans pose compelling questions to facilitate discussion and critical thinking and suggest engaging activities that are connected to the social studies concepts. The book also includes sample student handouts for the selected pieces of literature.

This text offers a teacher and student-friendly collection of lessons and activities that help educators use picture books to engage younger students in meaningful social studies activities and bring this critical subject back in elementary schools. In order for today's children to succeed as adults, they need a solid foundation of life skills inculcated at a young age. Social studies is key to building this critical knowledge, yet less attention is being paid to social studies in elementary schools as this subject becomes more essential. The authors of this text have a solution: use picture books as dual-purpose texts that fulfill more than just language arts needs, and take the time dedicated to those lessons to simultaneously teach social studies. Each chapter of this text is organized around one of the National Council for the Social Studies' Ten Thematic Strands, covering diverse and engaging topics ranging from community and individuality to science and technology. This book serves as a vital resource for classroom teachers, methods professors, staff developers, and curriculum writers who prioritize keeping social studies a part of the elementary school curriculum. Includes excerpts of primary source materials for student activities Contains various photographs, illustrations, charts, and graphs throughout the text Extensive annotated bibliography of picture books for each chapter that includes a discussion question for each book Appendixes include invaluable planning templates, reproducible handouts, and other teacher resources