Canada's government is interested in making history a more central focus in the education system. A project, called 'The Historical Thinking Project' is attempting to foster a new approach to teaching history. The aim of this approach to to provide social studies departments, local boards, provincial ministries of education, publishers and public history agencies with models of more meaningful history teaching, assessment, and learning for their students and audiences. This website provides many teacher resources, lessons, and a forum, and can definitely be useful for history teachers.

Historical Thinking, according to this project, involves teaching 6 concepts in to students:
1. Establish Historical Significance
2. Use Primary Source Evidence
3. Use Primary Source Evidence
4. Analyze Cause and Consequence
5. Take Historical Perspectives
6. Understand Ethical Dimensions of History

Many of these concepts are focused on challenging students to think critically and understand their own lives in the historical context of past decades, centuries and millennia. Students should become historical thinkers just as they are mathematical or scientific thinkers.

This resource has so much information about teaching literacy in geographical concepts. This article describes how to teach students to read and write maps, tables, charts, and pictures in all themes of geographic inquiry, physical geography and natural resources. The goal of the teacher is to explain how all of these forms of communication are used to communicate information in a concise format and illustrate how one piece of information is related to another. This can be a difficult task, however the role of the teacher and student are described in lessons for each topic the 3 geography units. Teachers can use this resource when teaching geography from grades 7 through 9.

This website is an example of a social studies teacher implementing technology into their classroom by having a class website. This type of class is interactive for students and will motivate them to become better learners. As university students, we have gotten used to having access to notes, grades, and assignments online, however this is not commonly found with elementary school students. Although the subject material on this website is not Canadian, the concept can definitely be applied and used in our classrooms.

Mr. DeMink includes course outlines, project guidelines, notes, and grades on his website. Students are able to access these materials at any time, allowing them to be involved in the course after school hours. The problem with this strategy, like many technological strategies, is that some students may not have access to a computer outside of school. It is pertinent that if this idea is used in a classroom, then hard copies of the notes and available at student's requests.

This article is full of ideas about how to make social studies more fun for the technological generation of students by using a variety of social media networks (coveritlive, skype, myspace, wiki and many more). Instead of reading and summarizing a textbook, coveritlive (a blogging website) can be used to blog a textbook. Most students know how to make a wiki or myspace page, but how many of them thought about making a myspace profile for a historical figure? Probably none! There are so many more engaging ways to learn the same information in less traditional ways. Students learn the social studies curriculum as well as media literacy, which is essential for them to master in this day and age.

Websites such as FreePoverty and FreeRice virtually save the world! FreeRice is a website that generates questions, and for each right response, 10 grains of rice are donated through the world food program to help end hunger. Websites like these can be used to increase education as well as learn abut important social issues and make a difference.

This article talks about using Fred Newmann's concept of "authentic teaching" in the classroom. Doing 'authentic work' is working for a purpose, not just a grade. Making important decisions is a good way to get students to think critically. This article discusses how taking students out of school to businesses, agencies, conducting interviews, and using sources outside of textbooks and the internet get students to become more passionate about what they are learning. If they can relate what they are learning in school to real world examples, then they are more likely to put more effort into their work. Examples in this article range from how this strategy can be used in important decisions of today as well as how this strategy can be used with historic application.

For example, hunger is a social issue of today. Instead of researching the topic, students would have the opportunity to visit a local foodbank and meet with the staff. Interviews could be conducted and a real inside view on the local communities social issues can be more beneficial than teaching this information traditionally. Students are immersed in the issue and can create a deep and meaningful connection with the information they are receiving.

Information gathered from today's time period can still assist in making a deep and meaningful connection with the past. for example, it is believed that Louis XVI was brought down in part by hunger and starvation. If students are instructed to advise the king about whether or not he should increase taxation, then they can draw from their real world experience at the food bank to understand how big a problem hunger and poverty are.