Connecting Children with Children, Past and Present: Motivating Students for Inquiry and Action

• Nine months before Rosa Parks took a stand against segregation, fifteen-year old Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat.
• Nine-year-old Johnny Clem joined the Union army as a drummer and by age eleven became a lance corporal; eventually he became a major general.
• Iqbal Masih of Pakistan was a debt-bonded laborer at age four; freed at age 10, he began a crusade against child labor.

Through making connections like these, students can see that history is their story, too. Eula Fresch shows how you can use this interest to engage upper elementary and middle school students in historical inquiry by introducing them to primary sources created by or about real children. She shares resources and strategies for doing this in each of her chapters, built around a theme or period of history. Students learn how to interpret letters and diaries, analyze photographs, and role play from the perspectives of their historical peers. Fresch also connects the past to the present - she describes how students can translate and use their predecessors' examples to become activists in their own communities.

Loaded with archival and contemporary material with links to NCSS standards, a substantial annotated bibliography, and plenty of classroom examples, Connecting Children with Children, Past and Present is a unique resource, ready for immediate use to empower your students to create history today.