Developing Perspective Consciousness via Middle Grades
Trade Books that Feature the Global South(s): A Case for
Using Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again
Elizabeth Barrow and Kathryn Caprino
Georgia Southern University and Elizabethtown College
OUR SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS are flled with students
from many diferent backgrounds. But do the texts we select for
them refect their identities and experiences as well as the diverse
world in which we live? This article aims to help middle grades
(grades 6-8) social studies teachers consider how trade books that
feature the global South can be paired with primary historical
texts in order to help students develop perspective consciousness.
After articulating the importance of global education and defning
perspective consciousness and the global South, we share lesson
activities that correlate with Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back
Again, a middle grades trade book, that align with the C3 Framework.
We also share additional middle grades titles that feature the global
South for teachers who want to adapt and modify the lesson activities
we ofer for Inside Out and Back Again to other middle grades texts
and/or historical periods.
The History Teacher Volume 51 Number 2 February 2018 © Barrow and Caprino
No one would believe me
but at times
I would choose
wartime in Saigon
over
peacetime in Alabama.
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