“An extraordinary resource for learning and teaching. It effectively illustrates how historical knowledge and factual evidence drawn from the past can be dramatically brought to life for students in the classroom. Teaching Columbus illustrates practical and thoughtful approaches for effectively presenting the complexity and richness of the American experience.”
—Manning Marable , Director, Center for Contemporary Black History, Columbia University

“An outstanding demonstration of the many advantages of the inquiry approach to learning. Barlowe encourages students to grapple with the hard questions of interpretation, as well as the diversity of perspectives from which history is experienced.”
—Leith Mullings, Presidential Professor, CUNY Graduate School

Put new life into the teaching of Columbus! This book offers an insightful description of inquiry teaching and shows—through classroom exercises, writing assignments, discussion topics, and thoughtful reading selections—how to apply inquiry to the topic of Columbus in the New World. Rather than providing a “recipe” approach to teaching, Barlowe provokes us to think more deeply about what we teach, why we teach it, and how to engage students in the ever-fascinating study of history, an “argument without end.”

Book Features:

• An inquiry case study of an American history unit on Columbus.
• Explicit descriptions of classroom exercises and assignments.
• Examples of student work.

Contents:

Introduction to Inquiry Teaching
Engaging Students in History
Debate, Discussion, and Writing
Teaching Columbus
Geography and Columbus’s Predecessors
Assignments and Activities: Developing Inquiry Skills
Final Paper and Conclusion

Co-published by the Center for Inquiry in Teaching and Learning. Ann Cook, Series Editor, Co-chair, New York Performance Standards Consortium.