Making History Mine: Meaningful Connections for Grades 5-9 (Review)
by Sarah Cooper
Stenhouse (2009)

Reviewed by Patrick Vernon, NBCT
Middle School Social Studies (North Carolina)
Teacher Leaders Network

Making History Mine is a great resource. The entire book offers teachers the opportunity to gain a fresh approach to teaching strands of history.

Educators could use all of the text or choose to only focus on one or two topics and read those chapters in depth. Author Sarah Cooper does an excellent job of organizing the topics so that Chapter One deals with examining the impact individuals have made in history and each successive chapter tackles topics such as differing points of view about history, use of primary sources in classes, incorporating  current events, getting the most out of student research projects, and empowering students to be ethical global citizens.

Even if a reader had planned to only read a section here or there, the scaffolding style of the book encourages us to read the entire text.

The book aims to make history appealing to students in grades 6-9. Cooper provides meaningful examples of how she has used activities with her students. Her examples come from the entire range of grades targeted in the text, along with a variety of courses typically taught in these grades. Through her use of diverse examples, the author is able to keep readers thinking about how they might apply strategies in their own classrooms.

In some ways the book is like a sampler platter of activities. Some lessons that the writer has used are thoroughly explained and have accompanying materials in the book so that teachers could easily adapt the lesson to their own classrooms. Other activities are mentioned but implementation details are left out. Future editions of Making History Mine would be strengthened if appendices were included offering detailed procedures for activities discussed in the text.

The constantly changing lives of adolescents mean that educators must adapt what they do to make meaningful connections between their students and history. This text is a useful tool for social studies teachers to do just that.