Social Studies Standards

Of special interest to: Teachers interested in IEFA

Topic: Short Films by Indigenous Filmmakers (with teaching guides)

Program Overview

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.

How to Register

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.

Recent Teaching Montana History Updates

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.

Mark Your Calendar

Culture Keepers, Catalysts, and Cowboys: the 53rd Annual Montana History Conference will be held September 24-26, 2026, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in downtown Billings.

We're planning a fabulous line up of workshops, tours, lectures and discussions focused on Billings and Eastern Montana history. Conference registration will open in mid-July.

Check the MTHS History Conference webpage often for updates on conference highlights and registration information. If you would like to revisit a past conference, click here to listen to and watch past conference lectures.

Not sure what the History Conference is all about? It's a three-day Montana history festival full of lectures and panel discussions, practical workshops, networking opportunities, and in-depth bus and walking tours. You don't have to be a professional historian or an academic to love it. It's a public history conference with something for everyone. Attendees have multiple options to attend workshops, tours, and/or lectures in small doses, or jump in and attend the whole three-day extravaganza. Check out this highlights video from last year to see what it's all about.

Questions? Contact Christine Brown at christine.brown@mt.gov.

Reserve Your Room

The conference will be headquartered at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, 27 N 27th St, Billings, MT 59101. Group rates start at $169 per night plus tax, city fee, and parking. Reserve your room online under the conference block or call (406) 252-7400 to make your reservation. When calling use the group name and code: Montana History Conference Attendees & CDT935. Group rates expire on August 24.

GEEO Teacher Travel Programs

See the full list of all programs with links to each trip's webpage. 

• Summer 2026 programs are officially live!
• Explore our recommended combo trips to maximize your time abroad next summer.

All K-12 Grade Levels

Donna McCrae, Head of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, pulled together this very handy list of websites that support Teaching with Primary Sources for a presentation she gave at the MFPE Educator Conference. She gave me permission to share it with you all.

Websites with Teaching Guides and Lesson Plans

• Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets - Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature and culture developed by educators, complete with teaching guides for classroom use.
• Library of Congress Classroom Materials - Curated thematic primary source sets, lesson plans and example presentations.
• DocsTeach - Features activities from educators from around the country based on documents found in the National Archives holdings. Filter by historical era, thinking skill, activity type and grade level.
• Smithsonian for Educators - Online lesson plans, interactive activities, and multimedia materials, tailored to various grade levels and subjects.
• EDSITEment: The Best of the Humanities on the Web - National Endowment for the Humanities site with lesson plans, teacher's guides and media resources. Includes ideas and activities focused on local history.
• Digital Inquiry Group - Curriculum designed to engage students in historical inquiry. Each Reading Like a Historian lesson revolves around a central historical question and features a set of primary documents designed for groups of students with a range of reading skills. This site requires a log-in.
• Montana Historical Society Resources for Educators - Resources organized by skill level and by subject. Lesson plans are available for several subjects including civics, geography, art, mining history, and Indian Education for All.
• Newberry Library Classroom Resources - Digital Collections for the Classroom support key history and literature learning goals in critical thinking, analysis, close reading, and visual literacy. Includes lesson plans, skills lessons and contextual essays.
• National Park Service Teaching with Museum Collections - Includes lesson plans for teaching with objects. Regional lesson plans include Grant Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, Nez Perce National Historic Park and Yellowstone National Park.
• National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places - Location, theme and state-based lesson plans. Includes guides for using and writing place-based 'classic' and 'lightening' plans.

Websites with Primary Source Content

• Library of Congress Digital Collections - curated sets of digitized content from the Library of Congress collections. Formats include (but are not limited to) photos, maps, pamphlets, audio, and moving images.
• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) - Over 52 million keyword-searchable images, texts, video and sound files. Curated exhibitions with primary source content accompanied by contextual essays.
• Digitized Montana Newspapers - Landing page, hosted by the Montana Historical Society, for linking to digitized newspapers available via the public access portal for Newspapers.com, Chronicling America, and several other Montana newspapers.
• Chronicling America - A searchable digital collection of historic newspapers from across the United States dating from 1736 to 1963. Browse and keyword search options. Full image.
• Montana History Portal - Digitized content contributed by Montana libraries, museums, archives, and cultural institutions. Contents include maps, photographs, rare books, historic documents, school yearbooks, diaries and letters, oral histories, audio and video clips, paintings, illustrations and art.
  • Curated Digital Exhibits pair primary sources around a theme or topic with narrative text.
• David Rumsey Map Collection - Over 142,000 digitized maps from around the world from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
• Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman on the Montana History Portal, written and published by the Montana Historical Society

Additional Teaching Resources

• 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.)

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!

Additional K-12 Resources

• Aldrin Family Foundation Map Package Grant Application - Aldrin Family Foundation has worked with donors to make Giant Mars and Moon Map packages available for distribution to individual schools, school districts, and informal education organizations throughout the country in areas where we believe they can do the most good, especially in under-served communities.
• Right Question Institute - This is a method for teaching students to ask and develop questions--can be used in K-12 classrooms.
• TPS [Teaching with Primary Sources] Teachers Network - (A place where teachers share with one another; free but registration is required. Teachers share ideas for K-12 primary source integration).
• Social Studies Central - (A great aggregated list of sites by Martha Kohl's favorite social studies education blogger Glenn Wiebe--has material for K-12 but it's not organized by grade level).
• Edsitement: The Best of the Humanities on the Web (National Endowment for the Humanities) - K-12 lesson plans are searchable by grade level.
• National Geographic - K-12 lesson plans are searchable by grade level.
• Indian Land Tenure Association Lessons of Our Land - (K-12 lesson plans searchable by grade level. Free but requires registration).
• OPI Indian Education Social Studies Resources - K-12 lesson plans are searchable by grade level.
  • Social Studies Standards (2021) Indian Education for All Connections
• Montana Historical Society Education and Events - Mostly 4-12 lesson plans, although there are a few offerings suitable for K-3 as well.
• Native Knowledge 360 - Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian - K-12 lesson plans searchable by grade level.

Grades 3-12

• National Archives Educator Resources - Lower elementary through high school
• 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

• TeachingHistory.org National History Educational Clearinghouse
  • Elementary School

Middle School

• TeachingHistory.org National History Educational Clearinghouse
  • Middle School
• iCivics - Free but requires registration--for middle and high school to teach civics.
• GeoQuest - free interactive project for MT middle and high school students.

Junior High - High School

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.

Stanford History Education Group

Stanford History Education Group (material is free but you must create an account to access some of it)

• Reading Like a Historian History Lessons (includes both US history and world history for grades 7-12)
• Beyond the Bubble History Assessments (includes both US history and world history for grades 7-12)
• Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum (includes both US history and world history for grades 7-12)

High School

• TeachingHistory.org National History Educational Clearinghouse
  • High School
• iCivics - Free but requires registration--for middle and high school to teach civics.
• U.S. Citizenship Naturalization Test - high school government.
• GeoQuest - free interactive project for MT middle and high school students.

Councils

• National Council for the Social Studies