Greetings fellow classmates,
Whew! I don’t know about all of you, but my mind has been spinning ever since our Tuesday night class. There’s so much to reflect upon when it comes to learning how to teach elementary history and social studies topics, and I’ve found myself contemplating the best ways to integrate language arts in a cross-curricular fashion to get students interested in reading and learning about the past.
To add some personal context, I’m forty-something years old and my elementary school years were in the eighties. (And yes, my younger friends, it was as fantastic as you’ve heard!) But from what I remember about learning history as a child, I found it boring. Painful. The subject to endure. History was taught from a textbook only. There were no supplementary materials. And I hated it. However, I loved to read . . . but only fiction. English was my favorite subject, and all subjects were taught separately and distinctly.
That brings me to the following central teaching question that I’d like you all to ponder: Should we as educators use historical fiction to help teach our elementary students history? Or, will this blending of genres impede a child’s ability to discern fact from fiction? Should we avoid historical fiction until a certain grade/age level or introduce it as early as possible to potentially help students (like a younger me) become more engaged in learning about the past?
I’ve compiled a few varying viewpoints on the teaching and learning of history through historical fiction below:
- Connecting to History Through Historical Fiction
- The Perils of Teaching History through Literature
- Vitamins in Chocolate Cake: Why Use Historical Fiction in the Classroom?
- No, You Can’t Learn History From Historical Fiction (click “Continue Reading” in the pop-up box)
- Historical Fiction in the Classroom
I’ll reserve my own thoughts and opinions until the rest of you have had a chance to read, reflect, and respond. Happy Thursday!
I remain,
Your sincere
friend
Sue Annely
Oh, Sue Anne, your signature made my evening!
I love this post and the questions. I too will reserve my thoughts until I see how your classmates respond.
Hi Sue Anne!
Thank you for your response! I love how you bring in your own personal experiences about learning social studies when you were in school. It is difficult to know whether or not to bring historical fiction into the classroom to help teach history to students, especially when we see so many inaccurate historical fiction books being produced, as we saw in class this past week. In my opinion, I believe that historical fiction should be included in the curriculum and used as a tool, but we should be carefully picking and choosing the books that we are reading/exposing our students to. After reading some of the articles, I felt like one issue is that historical fiction might not be totally accurate. This is why when reading a historical fiction book to students, we should be pairing it with accurate information, and teach them further about the topic after reading the book. We want the books that we choose to be the most respectful, historically accurate versions that we can find. I took found learning about history boring when I was in elementary school and even middle school. Everything did come out of a textbook, and it was not engaging in the slightest. Being able to read books with pictures, and colors would be really exciting and draw more students into enjoying learning about history. As we did in class, I think it would be important to bring in a primary source along with a lesson about the person/event that the historical fiction book is talking about, that way students aren’t just learning from the book, but are also getting some other knowledge. I personally love to read and would find it much more interesting to learn about topics that I might have found boring as a child with fun picture books that were more up my alley. It may have even made me enjoy history and social studies classes a bit more. I think that this could be started as young as kindergarten because it would be increasingly difficult to teach these kids history using any other type of method. At that age they all love to read so much, so why not try and teach them a bit through what you are reading to them. Overall, historical fiction of course should not be the only way your students are learning about history, but they can be helpful tools especially when you have young learners.
Hi Sue Anne!
Thank you so much for sharing about your own personal experiences with learning history at a young age! I relate to you in the sense that I struggled with finding history interesting when learning throughout elementary and middle school. I mostly would be taught through reading textbooks, and then reviewing the information with the class. This was NOT engaging for me at all, and I often found myself bored while trying to comprehend all that was provided in the texts. This is why I believe historical fiction should be incorporated into curriculum starting in kindergarten or first grade. Historical fiction does have some risk factors, such as parts of history being told in an incorrect way, or important parts of history being left out of stories. However, historical fiction also has the capability of informing students about real events that took place in the past in an engaging way. I wish I read more historical fiction books throughout my education because I believe I would not have dreaded history classes as much as I did. I was able to learn by reading historical textbooks, but I truly believe I would have learned more by being fully engaged in the content that was being taught through projects or historical fiction books. Currently, I love to read! If I was given more engaging books, such as historical fiction, I believe I would have loved to read about history just as much as I love reading all genres now. I think using historical fiction books as a form of teaching history could be started in kindergarten or first grade because students will be able to continue with the skill in the grades to follow. Starting at an early age allows for the students to become comfortable with the way of learning history, and will hopefully get them more interested in learning about historical events as they continue to progress through school. Teachers absolutely need to be aware of what events are being mentioned in the book, and check to make sure that the history is accurate. This is the most important part about teaching history because students should be learning about what truly happened without details being left out or changed to avoid difficult topics of the past. Teachers should also focus on trying to be as respectful as possible when explaining events of the past because a lot has changed in the current world compared to previous ages. Overall, historical fiction should be incorporated into curriculum in order to engage students in learning about history starting at an early age. This will benefit their future learning experiences with history because they will be more interested in the topics.
I love your blog post for this week, and especially enjoyed how you signed off! It was very clever!
Hi Sue Anne!
Thank you so much for your blog post! I really appreciated how you utilized your personal experience to further explain your question to the class.
I certainly agree with you that learning history was boring. To be honest, it was one of my least favorite classes in elementary, middle, and high school. This is because each of my teachers just simply read from a textbook and expected us to memorize the facts. Although memorizing facts is important, it’s also vital to understand and interpret historical information. As for your question, I strongly feel as though historical fiction should be taught because it allows students to become more interested in history. Although all the information in historical fiction may not be completely accurate, this information can be paired with the actual historical facts. Teachers must differentiate between historical fiction and real history. As Halle mentioned, some history books may include biased and stereotypical information that should not be read to students. Teachers should be aware of certain information in historical fiction that could convey the wrong message to students and be sure to avoid those types of resources. As a teacher, I will ensure to use primary and secondary sources as well as historical fiction to ensure students are engaged in the work. As students grow older and begin their high school years, historical fiction should be used less and less. However, I think historical fiction being taught to lower elementary school students is critical to give students the foundational interest in the various aspects of our world’s history.
Hello Sue Anne!
Thank you so much for this post! Like you, I didn’t look forward to Social Studies classes in elementary and middle school. Most of class was filled with textbook reading and monotonous assignments. I would learn the same things every year, and I preferred reading my fiction books to the nonfiction world History class presented to me. As I got into high school, AP classes allowed me to get more variety in terms of topics and assignments. I became more interested in the history of the world around me.
I believe that using historical fiction in the right way can supplement student learning in significant ways. By teaching your students how to discern fact from fiction, by teaching them what parts of historical fiction are made up, and by including nonfiction reading along with the fictional reading, History class can be made interesting and relevant. For example, a historical fiction book about Abraham Lincoln talking to the reader about the significant points in his life can allow students to learn more about former President Lincoln, and it can be supplemented with primary sources (such as journal entries and speeches).
Thank you again for sharing! I hope to hear your opinion on historical fiction soon.
Hi Sue Ann! This was a great post, and I know this is an important topic for you because of your prior interest of it in the science class! I love that you are continuing to gather information and opinions throughout out other classes to make an informed decision for our future students.
Like you, I love the idea of reading and having the right resources for students to look at whenever they can. I like having these conversations with you because we can alway discuss what our opinions are and how we could use them in a classroom, and what problems may arise, if any. From the articles you liked us, I am thinking that it is important to have historical fiction options out for students to utilize, especially for those who don’t love the topics of history. I like its use in the younger grades (K-2/3) because it gives students one specific instance in history to learn more about and give them opportunities to reflect on and think about. Surprisingly, the article I ended up loving was the one that was opposed to historical fiction as a resource (and I loved that you included it, shows that you (and we, as educators should be) are open to opposing opinions and should look at all the issues) because of its “concreteness” to one specific instance in history. As we talked about in class, there are so many things that we should be utilizing in our study of history, such as diary entries, songs, newspapers articles, first and secondhand accounts of an event to help students reach an understanding of it. History is not concrete, and not often is it sure in its interpretation, so historical fictions are fun to read, but shouldn’t be the sole source of information. I love them for the younger grades, as I stated, but think they should used with other sources incorporated in late elementary to get the whole picture of history.
Hello Sue Anne,
Your post was very intriguing, especially following our last class, thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Your signature also gave me a good laugh!
The readings you provided allowed me to see the benefits and drawbacks of implementing historical fiction. For the most part, I believe that with the right guidance and strategies, students can greatly benefit from reading historical fiction in the classroom. Some of the articles mentioned potential historical inaccuracies and/or general falsehoods present in historical fiction. As exercised by our last class, I believe these drawbacks can be minimized through the thorough vetting of material by the teacher, equipping students with the skills to recognize inaccuracies, and adding context through instruction. I think that there are too many benefits that come from reading historical fiction for us to abandon it completely. Especially for younger students, fiction and picture books make learning more accessible and enticing, something that was evidently missing from a lot of our childhood experiences in the history classroom. For the most part, my experience included textbook learning and PowerPoints alone until I took my first AP history class in my sophomore year of high school. We used online resources, fiction and nonfiction books, historical roleplays, etc. in that class, and for the first time I was excited to be in a history classroom. As long as we don’t dismiss the very valid critiques of using historical fiction in the classroom, students will receive a lot of advantages, particularly when paired with effective teaching practices.
Hello Sue Anna,
Thank you for your post.
I appreciate your thoughts this week and agree with you concerning your feelings about teaching this topic to students in the elementary schools. It is a difficult subject to teach to students, so teachers definitely need to be subject matter knowledgeable to ensure they are teaching specifically what the SOL requires and the school guidelines dictate. I believe books being utilized in classrooms should be suitable for teaching elementary students. As students move forward in their learning journeys, what they learn will be built upon from what they have learned. This is one reason the books should provide knowledge and the history should be accurate, up-to-date, and will provide information needed for the students be successful. This is why it is important that teachers should be aware of what authors are providing to our students in their works.
My elementary school years were a few ago as well, but I can remember those years as being fun, enjoyable, but challenging. History was taught from text books, but I do remember school fieldtrips to different locations (Washington, DC, Monticello), to receive learning experiences first hand. I can still remember to this day going to Washington to meet our local congressman, a highlight of that school year.
To answer your question concerning using fiction to help teach our elementary students history is an interesting question. I believe if using fiction to teach history could potentially take away from the truth of the history. If teachers can provide meaningful lessons through fiction, then I would be all for it as long as the fiction books are supported by accurate information.
Hi Sue Anne!
Thank you so much for your post. Your final signature was such a great reference to our reading last class!
I love how you incorporated your own experiences with learning social studies into your post. Personally, I think that when planning instruction for our own future classrooms, it is critical for us to reflect on our own past teachers and strategies used. Therefore, we can try to improve our instruction to the best of our abilities.
I will admit, that I felt very similar to you when studying history in elementary, middle school, and high school. When my teachers taught straight from the text book, it felt as though those classes might last FOREVER. I found myself zoning out due to lack of engagement. As I entered high school, my teachers started to incorporate more slideshows, but ultimately they left them as slides with a bland background and too much text written along with it. However, what I do remember to have loved was my reading of historical fiction novels such as the “I survived” series and the “Magic Treehouse” books. Although novels such as these have the potential to be inaccurate, I think it is our job to then to do ample research before offering them to our students. Additionally, we need to make sure the we are teaching accurate facts alongside their readings and that students are comprehending them well.
In conclusion, I feel as though it is important to incorporate some form of historical fiction into our instruction to keep students excited about learning history.
Hello Sue Anne!
Thank you so much for your insightful post. Your signature made me chuckle!
I had a similar experience as you in my history classes growing up, but luckily my English teachers did incorporate historical fiction books in my middle and high school classes. They would talk with the history department about what we were learning and they would select a historical fiction book to read in class. I never used to be interested in history, but after that experience, I can’t get enough of the subject.
As many people have already pointed out, I believe it is the teacher’s responsibility to properly vet these texts, especially if they are picture books that do not provide as in-depth of a story as a significant chapter book might. In the effort to make the books kid-friendly and short, important details might be intentionally or unintentionally omitted. Some of the books we read in class were perfect examples of accurately representing moments in history through a fictional tale.
Additionally, it’s important to have a conversation after reading these books about what was history part of historical fiction. If I were to use a historical fiction book in my history class, I think I would first teach about the time period, then read the books, then follow up for discussion. I think first providing the background knowledge of the time period would help students decipher which aspects of the book are real and which are fiction.
Thank you for your question and wonderful insight! If you have any good historical fiction book recommendations, send them my way
Carstyn K
Hello Sue Anne!
I really enjoyed your blog post and the personal content you included. I too found history readings quite boring in elementary and middle school for the simple fact that much of the instruction took place out of a textbook. Using a textbook often times in my opinion made the process of reading about history very daunting. To address your question about the use of historical fiction in classroom instruction of history I believe that they can be helpful if supplemented in the correct ways. Because historical fiction books can have very problematic views and takes of historical events through the depictions of others, or with the language used to describe parties involved, some historical fiction books can be somewhat problematic to use in the classroom. Which is why it is important as the teacher to pay attention to these details when making the decision to use an historical fiction book in class instruction. I believe as a change up to the textbook historical fiction books or primary source documents can be used as a slightly different medium to communicate historical information to students.
Greetings, Sue Anne! First of all, I wish to say that I very much enjoyed your writing style, which is uncommonly eloquent and full of verve and wit—and these are not compliments that I bestow often or easily!
Second, with regard to the subject that you chose to address in your post: I think the most insightful by far of the articles that you listed is “No, You Can’t Learn History From Historical Fiction” by G. M. Baker, and I found myself agreeing intensely with each of the points he made in support of the titular argument. It is true that good historical fiction must represent its sympathetic characters as possessed of unrealistically modern beliefs and habits in order that a modern audience might find them palatable, and that this inevitably gives the reader the impression that the culturally specific values of our own time and place are universally valid, and that all of history has been a progression toward them; and it is true that fiction is meant to convey truths of human -experience- rather than truths of verifiable, objective fact, and has in fact failed as fiction inasmuch as it succeeds at conveying the latter as opposed to the former. Historical fiction uses history as a tool to tell a story, not the reverse. So Baker is absolutely right that you cannot learn history from historical fiction—IF you are an adult intellectual who seeks to gain a true historian’s understanding of the real lives and perspectives of past people and societies!
HOWEVER……in my opinion, the very attributes which make historical fiction useless or detrimental to an adult’s understanding of history make it perfectly suited to use in an elementary school classroom! While adults studying history ought to practice (and revel in!) the art of rewiring their brains temporarily to see from past people’s perspectives, children just learning history for the first time cannot be expected to suspend their beliefs and values and take on those of another culture, for they have not even finished becoming enculturated to their own society’s beliefs and values! Likewise, the focus of fiction on experiential, rather than objective, truths, is just what children in the preoperational or concrete operational stages, who cannot yet reason about purely abstract phenomena outside their experience, need in order to understand history. For these reasons, I think historical fiction would be an excellent supplement to the study of history in an elementary classroom, and a great way to keep children thinking about historical topics even during read-aloud periods or language arts lessons. The flaws which Baker identifies remain real, of course, but they are already present in all elementary-level history lessons, which must inevitably simplify and sanitize the past and present it through experiences rather than objective data in order to make it comprehensible to the developing minds of young children. Of course, historical fiction cannot be the only tool we use in teaching children history; but I don’t think anybody is suggesting that it is.
On that note, I would also like to take a moment to mock the article “The Perils of Teaching History Through Literature” which is as shallow and pedestrian as Baker’s article is perspicacious. The author, John De Gree, asserts that “-any- novel could be used to show what is wrong with teaching fiction as if it were fact” (it seems hard to believe that anybody would actually teach fiction “as if it were fact”, but I shall pass over this strawman out of mercy toward Mr. De Gree), but the example he chooses is Gone With The Wind, an infamously mawkish and vacuous book known nowadays -primarily- for its anti-Black racism. His article might appropriately be retitled “The Perils of Teaching History Through Literature That Is Universally Acknowledged to be Poorly Researched and Unashamedly Bigoted, and Automatically Accepting All Ideas Presented By That Literature as Indisputable Truth”. What “perils” might result from incorporating well-researched literature of actual merit into a curriculum De Gree does not bother to detail, though from statements such as “Archetypes…..do not resemble real people but instead are stereotypes that are easy to understand” and “these parents are…..training their children to use emotions when trying to understand the meaning of the past” one wonders if perhaps De Gree does not believe that fiction can actually possess merit except as shallow entertainment. He might do well to read Ursula K. LeGuin’s essay “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”
Hi Sue Anne, I really appreciated your post….it was an entertaining and informative read. The articles you provided were great ways to show varying viewpoints on teaching historical fiction in elementary social studies class. For me personally, I enjoyed history whether it was in the textbook or in a fictional book, I just love learning in any forms. I think in the classroom, we have different students with different learning styles, so we should be employing the use of historical fiction along with textbooks, online resources, possible field trips, etc, One caveat, we must make sure we preview the source information prior to sharing it, with the classroom to ensure we are giving out appropriate and historically accurate information. I am not sure if using the historical text will hurt a child’s ability to discern the fictional aspects of the text from the fact-based items, but this is where the teacher would add information in their lesson plan to check on the students’ engagement in the lessons. Since we now have so many tools and strategies to use, I think we can start teaching history as early as first grade but make sure the lessons are age appropriate. The article entitled “The Perils of Teaching History Through Literature” was particularly helpful to understand how some famous historical fiction works can provide inaccurate information to readers, especially those to young to discern fact from fiction. Using historical fiction texts, can be used by the teacher to tap into the student’s background knowledge and engage them in this manner. I do believe the new techniques of using reading and writing within other subject areas, such as social studies, are enhancements that will help students as they continue their educational journey.
Hi Sue Anne!
I love this topic. I also used to love the American Girl Doll Stories so I dove into that article and saw myself some. In class on occasion we would make up our own primary documents of what happened and I used to love to do that.
I think that both sides could have a valid argument but overall I really enjoy the idea of using fiction to help with historical learning. I think using different storylines and perspectives could be a really great way to engage students in the material.
I really think that fictional work can be used to help teach history! For example, The Magic Treehouse books by Mary Pope Osborne are a story that is based on fact. These books allow students to feel as though they are time-traveling with Jack and Annie to the era of their choice. Sure some moments are a little different because it is a child’s fiction novel, but the base is there. I think this base would allow students like yourself to dive into the material because they would be interested in the story. It would also be important to inform the students that this story is not 100% accurate (seeing as though these children were time-traveling and interacting with the historical storyline) but I believe it could spark some interest. In elementary school, I used to love reading these books, but I never read them as a part of history class or even close to the times that I was learning the material. If this story was read during language arts but then you would learn about a similar topics history then that would be a great way to intrigue students.
Hi Sue Anne,
I truly appreciate your clever use of Sue Annely after the gracious and beloved Queen Victoria! I also appreciate your topic regarding whether historical fiction should be read in elementary school. Your articles provided the pros and cons for sure. My opinion is that historical fiction should be used in elementary school! In Virginia, students learn how to discern fact from fiction beginning in kindergarten! It is seen on the skills progression chart! Seeing the facts of history come alive in a novel like BLOOD ON THE RIVER by Elise Carbonne (which is somewhat based on a true story), makes history so exciting for students. Teachers can then engage students in the skill of discerning fact from opinion by having them work together to create a fact and opinion chart. As well, the docents in Jamestown (the original site) have read the book and they incorporate characters from the story into field trip visits for the students who have read the book. I was with a group of students the day when the docent began to talk about a character from Blood on the River, Samuel Collier…the students went crazy with excitement!
While it seems a trend these days to ban books…I can only hope that does not trickle down to removing novels from social studies classrooms!