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Crafting Curriculum Beyond Words provides teachers and teacher educators with educative curriculum materials that feature historical photographs. An educative curriculum is designed for student and teacher learning. What you’ll find here are exemplar lessons that strongly illustrate a wise-practice, inquiry-based approach for teaching students social studies and educative scaffolds to help teachers develop their professional craft.

The exemplar curriculum centers around the question: What’s the proper balance between National Sovereignty and International Law? There are five interconnected lessons within the inquiry; they work individually or combined in any fashion. To emphasize the persistence of this issue, the inquiry features one photograph from the 19th century, two photographs from the 20th century, and two photographs from the 21st century. There are also connections within each lesson to contemporary society. Each lesson contains a teacher friendly—but, not teacher-proof—narrative; you’ll need to make a few decisions for your specific context. All necessary student handouts are included, all necessary teacher handouts are included, and you’ll find the lessons are “Monday Morning Ready.” Finally, and this is important, within each lesson you’ll also find four yellow, “sticky note” type insertions. They are the scaffolds designed to support teacher learning; you are strongly encouraged to engage with each “sticky note” and create new understandings.

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Crafting Curriculum is sponsored in part by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Midwest Region Program, located at Illinois State University. Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS Midwest Region does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress.

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