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At Thinking Nation, we are passionate about advancing reading and information literacy. Our mission is to equip educators and students with the tools they need to succeed in today’s complex learning landscape. To achieve this, we design resources that not only foster literacy development but also align seamlessly with key strands of the Common Core standards.

We recognize the hurdles students face when engaging with complex texts. That’s why we provide access to diverse and thought-provoking primary and secondary sources. These materials are intentionally challenging, encouraging critical thinking and deeper engagement with the past. However, as our Director of Curriculum, Annie Jensen, recalls from her own teaching experience, success with these texts requires more than exposure. She vividly remembers handing her students a primary source and simply instructing them to “analyze.” The blank stares and confusion made it clear—they needed explicit tools and guidance to navigate the complexities of the material.

In response, Thinking Nation developed scaffolded graphic organizers (THINKS) and other resources designed to make these complex texts more accessible. These tools empower students to break down challenging materials while honing essential historical thinking skills. By connecting these resources to literacy development, we help educators inspire a love of reading, an appreciation for history, and the analytical skills students need to thrive in any discipline.

This week, we’re excited to share something special. As advocates for lifelong learning and literacy, we asked our Thinking Nation staff to share their top book recommendations for 2025. But we didn’t stop there—we’ve tied each recommendation to one of the ten historical thinking skills embedded in all our resources. These skills go beyond history; they are universal, applicable across disciplines, and essential for developing informed, critical thinkers.

We hope you’ll enjoy this curated list of books and see how the power of reading can inspire a deeper connection to history, literacy, and beyond. Let’s continue fostering a love for learning and a passion for the stories that shape our world.

Thinking Nation’s Staff Book Recommendations for 2025

(Click any of the below pictures to buy the book!)

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(Read on for free resources!)

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In recent years, “empathy” has generated buzz‒and not always in a good way. As some, such as Paul Bloom make a case “Against Empathy,” historical empathy has gotten lumped in with the subsequent criticism. 

At Thinking Nation, we see historical empathy is an essential tool in the historian’s toolbelt. But what do we actually mean by “historical empathy?”

Our Definition

In essence, historical empathy is a skill, not a feeling. It is about using context and evidence to understand the motivations and the actions of the people of the past. 

However, getting students to engage in this work can be challenging. And, historical fiction can be a powerful tool to make this task easier.

The Role of Historical Fiction

SAMPLE LESSON

Let’s consider a Middle School U.S. History class studying the American Revolution. You have introduced students to the Winter at Valley Forge and you want them to dive into the sources‒but the 18th-century language feels daunting.

Imagine if you started with a dense primary source , like the one written by Alexander Hamilton about the conditions at Valley Forge. It begins with: “By injudicious changes and arrangements in the Commissary’s department, in the middle of a campaign, they have exposed the army frequently to temporary want, and to the danger of a dissolution, from absolute famine.” 

I bet I can guess how well that will go with your students… 

Now imagine, that instead you begin class by grounding students in the skill. Hand out the Historical Empathy Graphic Organizer to help them frame the topic and consider questions that activate their prior knowledge.

One group’s excerpt describes “the snores and farts” of the soldiers and expresses that an absent soldier, who was thought to be dead, was “not permitted to be dead!”

Now, you’ve got your students hooked! 

Then, you have students work together to analyze the primary sources and fill out a “Notice, Wonder, Think” chart. Afterward, students can mingle with classmates to share what they learned.

Complete the lesson with a “Triangle, Square, Circle Exit Ticket.” Now, students who may have struggled to engage with primary sources are attempting and grappling with them. They likely still struggled, but just maybe, they didn’t give up.

The Power of Historical Fiction

This lesson demonstrates the impact that historical fiction can have.  Students are more likely to participate in the critical thinking that historians practice. Students develop a curiosity about the people and events of the past. Students are drawn into the stories and can more accurately understand the context for life in a historical period and appropriately empathize.

Download this sample lesson here!

Fostering historical empathy and incorporating historical fiction into the classroom is a passion of mine. I’d love to hear what you think of this lesson plan or what other ways you do this with your students! Let me know by emailing me at annie.jenson@thinkingnation.org or adding a comment!

*For more book recommendations, join me on Instagram and Goodreads where I host The American History Teacher Book Club.

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During the 1960s, Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist, and Lenore Jacobson, an elementary school principal in California, set out to explore the effect of an educator’s expectations on student learning and instruction. In their study, elementary school teachers were told that certain students in their class were “academic bloomers” and that these students were expected to show significant academic growth during the school year. The study noted that, once told about the “academic bloomers,” teachers began to pay more attention to these students, began offering more feedback on their work, and took more time to provide challenging learning experiences. As a result of the teacher’s high expectations, these students, who were randomly selected and were not necessarily “academic bloomers,” showed increases in their IQ compared to the other students in the class. 

While the Pygmalion Effect Study, as it has come to be known, helps forward the idea that high teacher expectations can lead to higher educational outcomes for students, we know that many teachers continue to have a cycle of low expectations for students and their learning. Low expectations for student learning are influenced by many variables, including the teacher’s own personality, past experiences, the socioeconomic background of students, and the racial makeup of the school. We, as teachers, need to believe that all students can learn and that we can provide learning experiences that are challenging and doable. We need to break the cycle of low expectations. It takes work, but it can be done! 

The Pygmalion effect, for its part, is often viewed as a chicken and egg problem (expectations can influence performance but performance can also influence expectations, making it difficult to know which comes first). What is clear is that teachers make instructional decisions based on their perceptions of what their students can achieve and can often avoid exposing students to rigorous learning material because they have become convinced that it is out of the range of what their students can do.

At Thinking Nation, we believe that teachers should have high expectations for their students and for their learning. We challenge teachers to raise their expectations! Our resources provide ample opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking, evidence gathering, and argumentation. These skills, while difficult to teach, can make learning more relevant and more engaging for students. As a result, when students feel more engaged in their learning, they are more likely to challenge themselves and to grow academically. High expectations directly influence the learning materials the teacher selects or does not select. Our resources are built with the unyielding belief that all students can learn and that students can do hard things! 

Anyone who has ever watched a student playing video games can understand what determination to learn looks like. There is always a point in the game when a challenge is so demanding that the student “gives up.” Later, they return to the task and try again, and often fail to succeed even after a second try. Undeterred, the student continues to try over and over until they “get it.” While we are not arguing that a curated research paper (CRP) or a formative assessment is as innately engaging as a video game, we are arguing that students will challenge themselves and persevere when they feel the task is worthwhile. So let’s set high expectations for our students and design learning experiences that reflect those expectations. Onward! 

Watch our video discussing the need for high expectations in social studies education. 

In this week’s newsletter, we want to highlight the major platform updates we underwent over summer to ensure that our teachers have the best tools at their disposal. We are excited to share the latest updates, all aimed at simplifying the teaching workflow and enhancing students’ learning experience. Let’s dive into the key changes and improvements! (Also, if you want a video overview of the updates, go here!)

1. Resources Organized by Topic for Easy Navigation

We’ve reorganized the platform’s resources by topic. This change is aimed at making it easier for teachers to find and navigate through the platform. Now, everything you need is more accessible, helping you spend less time searching and more time teaching.

2. Select the Resources You Want to Assign

Our new filter option allows teachers to select exactly what they need. The filter ensures that teachers only see what they are looking for, making the assignment process faster and more tailored to the classroom’s needs.

3. A Unit Overview to Streamline Your Planning

We’ve added a Unit Overview feature that serves two essential purposes. First, it provides a quick and easy view of all available resources for a specific topic. This feature helps maintain consistency in how resources are used, allowing teachers to see what’s available at a glance. Second, it demonstrates clear alignment to various educational standards. The Unit Overviews show alignment to Common Core, California, Texas, EAD, or C3 standards.

4. AI-Enhanced Formative Assessments

We’ve integrated AI-powered formative assessments to assist in grading short answers automatically. This new feature will grade responses based on our rubrics criterias, providing immediate feedback to teachers and students. Teachers still have full control over the assignments as they can edit scores and feedback at any point before releasing grades to students. The “edit feedback/score” button is at the bottom right corner of the page when viewing the AI-given feedback and score.

We hope these platform updates will improve teachers’ experience with the platform and help them kick off the 2024-25 school year with confidence and efficiency. (and check out this video summary of the updates)

The Thinking Nation team has been hard at work over summer so that we can best support all of the wonderful teachers we work with! In next week’s blog, we will look at some of the platform updates that took place recently, offering teachers and students a more streamlined way to engage with the disciplinary nature of our classes. This week, though, we want to highlight our new posters and podcasts that may be of particular help at the beginning of the school year.

First, you asked, and we listened! We created a few different posters that are available free for you to print out and hang in your rooms. We hope that these posters further cement the language of historical thinking and analysis in your classrooms as students begin to internalize that “unnatural act” of historical thinking (click on the poster image to download the file).

New Podcasts

We’ve had several new podcasts/youtube videos published in the last month. Head over to the Thinking Historically About series on our Youtube Channel to find the video versions of most of the conversations. All of the conversations are published as podcasts. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout to listen! Here are the episodes:

• Thinking Historically About the Relationship between American Indians and Europeans with Dr. James Merrell, Vassar College (July 30)
• Thinking Historically with Dr. Catherine O’Donnell, Arizona State University – Why Should We Think Historically? (August 5)
• Thinking Historically About LGBTQ Protest with Dr. J.B. Mayo, University of Minnesota (August 13)
• Thinking Historically About Japanese Incarceration during World War II with Dr. Lily Anne Welty Tamai, California State University, Channel Islands (August 27)
• Thinking Historically About the Labor Movement with Dr. Dylan Shearer, University of Illinois, Chicago (September 5)

In each episode, the scholar explores the same essential question that guides our units. We hope these are helpful resources for you and your students as they engage in the work of the historian.

As you kick off the 2024-25 school year, we hope that these posters and podcasts better serve you as you aim to shift the paradigm of what social studies can be for your students.

There has been much talk in the media this week about historical moments. While we are certainly experiencing a very momentous time in our nation’s history at present, I went back into the past to consider a rather significant event that occurred on July 21, 1969. That was the day a man first walked on the Moon.

The United States space program was a capstone to a period of exploration and scientific discoveries. The 1960s were also a time of educational innovation. In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched this period of change with the issuance of Proclamation 3363, designating  “the period from November 6 through November 12, 1960, as American Education Week; (urging) citizens throughout the Nation to participate actively the observance of that week in their schools and communities.” The proclamation also encouraged that Americans “study the programs of our schools and demonstrate our support for the work of our dedicated teachers. (And) take every opportunity to strengthen our educational system so that our young people can be prepared to meet the challenge imposed on our Nation by this competitive century.” And over the course of the decade the Federal Government became increasingly education-oriented. There was an increase in federal aid and more programs were created to support education.

On the national level, the most significant changes to education affected students who were disadvantaged economically or educationally, with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Bilingual education increased. And as scholars and theorists voiced criticism of the manner in which Americans were educated, across the country schools and teachers gained the freedom to try creative ideas in an effort to improve education. For social studies education specifically (because this is after all a social studies blog) students began studying old subjects in new ways. One of product of the civil rights movement was a change in the approach to teaching American history. Courses exploring the founding of the United States began emphasizing diversity. The struggles of black Americans for equality were added to course material, as were the experiences of Native Americans. Education experts pushed for teachers to be empowered to develop their students’ minds and encourage their intellectual curiosity, rather than merely stressing learning by rote memorization.

Fueling the transformation of social studies education were numerous grant funded projects, many notably led by historians Edwin Fenton and Richard Brown. They and others created instructional materials, provided professional development to teachers, and entered into agreements with publishers, to transform traditional content focused history taught through lectures and use of a textbook, into new frameworks characterized by engaging materials where teachers used methods of inquiry to get students thinking, seeing, and writing about the past. The goal Brown wrote was to commit “to the idea that ‘history’ is primarily a way of learning and secondarily a body of knowledge…. To be sure, we (agree) that history as a body of knowledge is also important—the more that one knows of the past the better one’s ability to ask good questions of it—but nonetheless, we (view) the body of knowledge as essentially a treasure trove to be used rather than ‘mastered’ as an end in itself….”

This echoes the mission and vision of Thinking Nation today. So, what happened decades ago to unravel the progress made by these and other visionaries? Their reforms in teaching were overshadowed by controversies associated with the diversity of the subject matter. “Academic freedom struggles emerged in cities and towns across the nation as the “new social studies” went on trial.  (Fenton), called it a “national conspiracy” led by a small and interconnected group of extremists. And so, it was “back to the basics” along with a revival of traditional history defined largely as the acquisition of historical “facts.” Among those contributing to the backlash of the “new social studies” were critics of progressive education, including “The Council on Basic Education, business groups, religious fundamentalists, textbook critics Mel and Norma Gabler, neoconservative educators Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn, and backed by conservative funders with deep pockets such as the Heritage Foundation.” (Evans, R. W. (2011). The Tragedy of American School Reform: How Curriculum Politics and Entrenched Dilemmas Have Diverted Us from Democracy. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.)

What followed also included a growing concern about failing schools, a focus on standards, and eventually, the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 , promising to “combat the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in public education through a set of nationwide standards and federally enforced accountability.” Standardized tests focused on reading and math followed, and the era of teaching to the test began. And then of course, in early 2000s the United States began an intense focus on and funding of STEM courses. Social Studies was pushed to the side, as is covered in our white paper “A Second Class Subject? Why Social Studies Gets Short Shrift in U.S. Middle and High Schools,” published last November by the Education Week Research Center.  Now we find ourselves once again needing to transform social studies education—or perhaps “re-form” it back to what the innovators of the 1960s infused into the discipline.

Thinking Nation also believes in sharing the “undertold” stories of historical figures not featured in most textbooks. Our units cover “Women and the American Revolution” and “Women and the Civil War,” “The Jewish Experience in Nazi Germany,” “WWI and Minorities,” “Japanese Incarceration,” “El Salvadoran Migration,” “The Chicano Movement,” and more. There are Civics-Centered Topics which focus on “Protecting Civil Liberties,”The Citizen’s Role,” “Presidential Power,” “Social Media and Democracy,” and many more.

To learn more, you may download free resources available via our website. And feel free to Connect With Us to learn more

Back to School Webinar!

Please join Thinking Nation for: Empowering Students as Historical Thinkers: Transforming Social Studies Classrooms

Unlock the power of historical thinking in your classroom! Join us on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, from 3-4:30 PM CST for an exclusive webinar designed to provide you with methods to shift historical thinking from the teacher to the student. Gain practical strategies you can implement from day one, and receive free resources just for signing up, with even more available during the webinar. All registrants will additionally receive a recording of the webinar and a professional development certificate. Don’t miss this chance to equip yourself with everything you need for a classroom centered around historical thinking!

Register Today!