Access the 2021 Montana Content Standards for Social Studies (Official PDF).
Access the 2021 Montana Content Standards for Social Studies (Excel).
Webinar: New Standards for 2021: Overview and Planning for Implementation (February 8, 2021)
Model curriculum guides, professional development, and resources will be added as time allows.
Tech Directors: To access a machine readable version of the official Montana Content Standards for Social Studies, please visit the IMS Global CASE Network site. Create a free login, select Montana Office of Public Instruction, and view or download the standards. The CASE version of the standards can be uploaded to student information systems, curriculum mapping programs, and a variety of other uses. Learn more about the CASE Network CASE Network FAQ
Of special interest to: Teachers interested in IEFA
Re: Short Films by Indigenous Filmmakers (with teaching guides)
The Big Sky Film Institute is once again partnering with the Montana Office of Public Instructions Indian Education Unit to share films made by and about Native people. According to their Facebook post in the Teaching Montana History Facebook group:
The 2023 season of the NFI Film Club [Native Filmmaker Initiative] presents "Celebrating Cultures & Honoring Traditional Practices," a triptych of films curated to engage Montana youth with unique and uplifting stories of Native and Indigenous individuals ... who are building strength through their communities and upholding traditional practices in the modern day. Our films are selected and ready for teacher registration, each one accompanied with an accompanied discussion guide, streaming link to view the film and an invitation to join our live filmmaker Q&A with film teams and OPI’s Indian Education Specialist, Mike Jetty.
Here's more from their website:
The Native Filmmaker Initiative Film Club is a virtual youth education outreach program that screens a curated selection of Indigenous-made documentary films in classrooms across Montana. Following the screenings, filmmakers visit classrooms virtually for a live Q&A and discussion activities rooted in Montana's Indian Education for All Essential Understandings. Film Club discussions are led by the Big Sky Film Institute in collaboration with Montana Office of Public Instruction’s Indian Education Specialists as well as participating filmmakers to talk in-depth about the process of filmmaking....
Running October through December, each Film Club event will focus on diverse Indigenous subjects and topics. Consult the discussion guides to help adapt the Film Club activities into social studies, science, history or other areas of study. Films are available to view in advance of Film Club discussions and each classroom will receive access to discussion guides and instructions on how to join the live Q&A.
Visit the Native Filmmaker Initiative website to register your classroom to view one or more of this year's films. Registration includes a screening link to the film with details to join a live filmmaker Q&A and accompanied discussion guides. Email Director of Education, Julia Sherman, at julia@bigskyfilmfest.org for more information, or to be added to their Youth Programs email list.
Looking for Guidance?
Need advice on how to incorporate Montana History or IEFA into your classroom or how to meet the new social studies standards? The Montana Historical Society’s Teacher Leaders in Montana History are here to help. These Montana educators have a passion for history, collaboration, and education, and they are eager to help you find resources. Each teacher leader is ready to work with individual teachers, schools, and districts and are available to consult, mentor, and present at PIR days. Learn more.
Critical Race Theory
Someone asked me recently if our new fourth-grade textbook teaches Critical Race Theory (CRT). The answer is no--none of MTHS or OPI's Indian Education lessons teach Critical Race Theory. Some of them do teach about the history of discrimination. Confused about what you can and cannot teach? Here's an FAQ sheet.
Have you had parents ask if you are teaching CRT? Consider using the question as an opportunity to open a dialog. Since CRT means different things to different people, consider kindly saying, "explain to me what you are worried about, and I'll tell you if I teach it" and then address their specific concerns. (H/T to Teacher Leader in Montana History Dylan Huisken for this excellent advice.)
Teaching Montana History Is on Facebook!
If you spend time on Facebook, I hope you'll join--and actively participate--in our closed Teaching Montana History Facebook group. It's a great way to connect to other teachers.
Post 1 reviewed research that shows that, in elementary school, "Social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement" and explored some of the reasons why. It also highlighted the strategy of "write your way in/write your way out."
Post 2 focused on "chunking"--breaking longer/harder texts into smaller sections to make them more manageable and less intimidating to read.
Upcoming Opportunities for Educators:
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Integrated Literacy Strategies for Building Background Knowledge
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No time to teach social studies? No time to read during the school day? Then this workshop is for YOU! Throughout the day you will learn powerful strategies for using picture books to enhance reading practice and build background knowledge and vocabulary for elementary learners. Tammy will demonstrate powerful one-minute extensions to your regular read aloud routines that will support your students in building conceptual understandings making new content, facts, and vocabulary "sticky." Employing principles from cognitive science, you will explore ways to enhance students' long-term memory and retrieval and determine short fast lists of facts - or as Tammy calls them, "sets of knowns" that behave like magnets for acquisition of new knowledge.
Do you live over 45 miles away? We invite you to apply for a travel scholarship.
In Helena
- June 30, 9 am-4 pm, lunch provided
- Lincoln Center, 1335 Poplar St.
- Register. (Helena teachers: Please register directly with the district.)
- Bring: One of your favorite picture books to share with others and analyze for new learning opportunities
- July 18, 9 am-4 pm, lunch provided
- University of Montana, Phyllis J. Washington College of Education, Room 123
- Register.
- Cosponsored by Montana Council for Social Studies
- Bring: One of your favorite picture books to share with others and analyze for new learning opportunities
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P.S. It's not too late to take our survey about how many hours per week elementary students in your district are studying social studies--and be entered to win a $100 gas card. Curious why we are asking? Read more here.
P.P.S. NHD in Montana is sponsoring another free workshop (with travel stipends) for grades 4-12 teachers: "Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research," August 5-6, 2025, at MSU-Billings. Learn more and apply.
In Missoula
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Montana: Stories of the Land
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Online Course on Historic Argumentation
May 19-August 8, 2025
Join MTHS interpretive historian and National History Day in Montana co-coordinator, Dr. Melissa Hibbard, for 3 credit, 12-week summer course on historical argumentation and learn strategies to help your students think like historians and develop solid historical arguments.
This course includes four live webinars and other online asynchronous work. This course is available for FREE to Montana Teachers grades 4-12 thanks to a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources grant. Space is limited, so sign up asap.
Questions? Contact Melissa Hibbard.
Historical Thinking through Student-Driven Research
August 5-6, Montana State University-Billings
Want to engage your class with student-driven research projects using primary sources? Want to promote more historical thinking and critical analysis? Join teachers from across the state as Jamie Holifield, an educator for National History Day and former Milwaukee public schools social studies teacher, teaches you how to facilitate student research, analyze sources, and think historically. Think of it as a two-day “doing history” bootcamp.
Applications will be accepted until all spots are filled. Apply now!
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Monday 3/8/25, Humanities Montana was canceling the Speakers in the Schools program because the National Endowment for the Humanities had zeroed out its general operating grant. Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray, said he planned on continuing presenting across the state despite these cuts.
Chris has two programs: Montana's Poet Laureate and The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians: Métis Buffalo Hunters of the Northern Plains.
If your school has IEFA money available, you can use it to fund his appearance, and he is happy to help you with the logistics and reporting. This is also an option if you want to bring in other Native speakers, including ones who have been working through Humanities Montana. (Chris said he'd be happy to walk you through the paperwork for other Native speakers as well.) They include:
Chris is also actively pursuing alternative funding, so even if you don't have IEFA money available, if you want to bring him to your school, contact him and he will see what he can do.
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The HUB course also provides a brief overview of our traveling trunk program. These hands-on history footlockers use replica and real artifacts, photographs, and documents to bring history alive for students. Teachers get the trunks for two weeks; the rental fee is $25. Each footlocker comes with a user guide that has lesson plans and readings. These are all posted online and can be downloaded and used without ordering the trunk.
The footlockers are really popular, and teachers often reserve them months in advance, so I was surprised to see that some my favorites are still available this spring, including Coming to Montana, Montana State Symbols, and Through the Eyes of a Child.
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New HUB Course
Looking for a quick tour of the lessons and strategies we've integrated into the Montana: A History of Our Home curriculum?
We now have a one-hour class on OPI's Teacher Learning HUB to introduce educators to the key historical themes and topics integrated into the curriculum. (Participants receive one renewal unit.)
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Social Studies Second Tuesday: Teaching Thematically
Textbooks are generally organized chronologically, but is that the best way to organize your class? Join MTHS Teacher Leaders in History Cynthia Wilondek (9th-12th grade, Big Fork) for our last Tuesday Professional Development session, April 8 from 4:30-5:30 p.m., during which Cynthia will lead a discussion on the benefits and share tips on strategies for teaching social studies with themes rather than following a timeline. Register here.
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MT PBS: Streaming now for a limited time, "The U.S. and the Holocaust," A Film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick & Sarah Botstein
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Humanities Montana:
Winter in Montana is challenging for travel. During these months, Humanities Montana speakers can still visit your community — virtually — to present their humanities programs! Whether you are booking programs for the classroom, at a museum, or with a community center, speakers are available for virtual and in-person visits to provide free public humanities programming.
You can learn more about Montana Conversations or book Speakers in the Schools presenter on our website, you can learn about grant opportunities.
Subscribe to Humanities Montana.
Social Studies Resources
All K-12 Grade Levels:
- A fun look at the history of new year's resolutions (which go back in some form for 4,000 years!)
- Exposing your students to more primary sources.
- Incorporating more Indian history and culture into your curriculum.
- Taking your learning outside of the classroom (Wibaux middle school teacher Laura Dukart's cemetery project, "In Memoriam. A Study of Our Local Cemetery," is a great model; here's a presentation she created for teachers interested in creating a similar project in their own communities.)
- Implementing a new resource to teach civics and government.
- Using bell-ringers.
- Integrating a new teaching strategy or implementing something you learned at a recent PD.
- Learning more about National History Day by signing up to judge at a contest in Kalispell, Helena, Miles City, or Bozeman.
- Attending Social Studies Second Tuesdays (Next up is January 14, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. with author of Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky and Associate Clinical Professor at Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education Mark Johnson, who introduce lessons for teaching about the Chinese in Montana. Register. Attendees earn 1 Renewal Unit.)
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Of special interest to: Government Teachers
Teacher Leader in Montana History Elysia Bain shared some useful resources for teaching about tribal sovereignty
The first is this article, published in Indian Country Today in 2014: "Professor Breaks Down Sovereignty and Explains Its Significance," by Shaawano Chad Uran, professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington.
Elysia has her government students read the article and then answer some basic questions:
- Define the term sovereignty. (Okay! This one isn't basic, but according to the article "Sovereignty is a type of political power, and it is exercised through some form of government." In addition, "The defining aspects of sovereignty are the international relationships carried out as sovereign nations.")
- What are the three types of sovereigns in the United States? (Federal, state and tribal governments)
- What section of the U.S. Constitution recognizes tribal sovereignty? (Article VI, Clause 2)
- What are treaties and why are they important to understanding sovereignty? (Because "treaties are agreements made between sovereign entities...by signing a treaty, both sides are showing that they recognize the sovereignty of the other.")
Some other "check for comprehension" questions:
- Is the sovereignty of tribal nations the same as or different from the sovereignty enjoyed by individual states? (Different)
- According to Professor Uran, if tribes are "domestic dependent nations" (which is how the Supreme Court has defined them), how can they still be sovereign? (Absolute power, independence, and autonomy is not necessary for sovereignty to exist. and rights "not explicitly given up to the US Federal government are still held by the tribes.")
- Professor Uran does not think tribal nations should be blamed for their economic dependence on the United States. Why not? ("Tribal economies were based on access to land" and "lands were ceded to the U.S. by treaty in exchange for tribal economic security and other provisions."
Elysia follows this activity by having her students watch the four-and-a-half-minute video "Sovereign Rights, Sovereign People."
Looking for more short videos? Check out the National Museum of the American Indian's four minute "Nation to Nation" and twelve-minute "The 'Indian Problem'," two other videos created as part of NMAI's "Nation to Nation" exhibit.
Do you have resources that work really well with your class that you'd like to share? Let me know!
3-12 Grade Levels:
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National Archives Educator Resources Lower elementary through high school
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History Labs (“History Labs are research and investigative learning experiences that provide teachers with the necessary information, resources, and procedures to teach a full range of historical thinking skills by taking students through a process that is methodologically similar to that employed by historians.” The site includes a template for creating your own and History Labs made by other teachers--upper elementary through high school).
Elementary
Middle School
Jr. High - High School
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For High School, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) offers free, innovative classroom products. These online learning resources form the foundation of a global civics curriculum, empowering young people with the essential knowledge, skills, and perspective to be responsible citizens, take on the challenges of global competition, and steer through partisan rhetoric and disinformation. Review their resources that could be used in a science classroom. For more information contact Lori Matza, lmatza@cfr.org.
- World101: An award-winning collection of multimedia explainers for students with little or no background knowledge of international relations and foreign policy. With accessible, jargon-free language and instructor-designed teaching resources, lessons on the World101 platform are non-partisan and developed in partnership with CFR experts.
- *We are soliciting applications for our CFR Education Ambassador 2022-2023 program. A great opportunity for middle school and high school social studies teachers.
- Model Diplomacy: The Model Diplomacy simulation program invites high-school students to step into the shoes of decision-makers on the National Security Council or United Nations Security Council to debate the world’s most pressing issues with dozens of full-length case studies, an expanding library of short-form scenarios covering current and historical events, and exclusive video content featuring commentary from foreign policy experts.
- Convene the Council: Developed in partnership with iCivics, one of the nation’s leading providers of educational games, Convene the Council empowers students to understand the basics of how U.S. foreign policy gets made and the ways in which countries and international organizations can influence foreign policy priorities. Twenty gameplay scenarios reveal how foreign and domestic policy are intertwined, and how decisions made in one corner of the world can affect us all. Spanish version available.
High School
Councils