The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Coherent history curriculum is chronological. That’s the conclusion of April Croy and Michelle Palmieri, former English language arts curriculum writers now developing a new social studies curriculum, Tapestry. The sisters, who co-founded Lumina Learning, explain their thinking in an engaging conversation with host Ebony McKiver on this episode of the History Matters Podcast.
The conversation explores how research on the science of reading has shaped their approach to history instruction, in which students build durable background knowledge and vocabulary over time. April and Michelle explain that literacy and history are inseparable because students develop reading, writing, vocabulary, and critical thinking through meaningful historical content.
They emphasize that students need a strong foundation of knowledge so they can ask rich questions, analyze evidence, or engage in authentic inquiry, making content and inquiry complementary rather than competing priorities. High-quality texts, close reading, thoughtful discussion, and authentic writing tasks allow students to strengthen literacy while learning to think like historians. April and Michelle also stress the importance of carefully selected historical sources, purposeful text sets, and opportunities for curiosity-driven inquiry.
Ultimately, they call on schools to protect dedicated time for elementary social studies. They argue that consistent, content-rich history instruction not only strengthens reading comprehension but also prepares students to understand the past, make sense of the present, and become informed, engaged adults.
This podcast is produced by Knowledge Matters on behalf of the History Matters Campaign. Follow Knowledge Matters on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter/X. Search #historymatters to join the conversation.
Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.
Resources:
- Lumina Learning
- Knowledge Matters. History Matters Review Tool. 2026.
- Adam Tyner and Sarah Kabourek. Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Washington D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute (September 2020).
- Shanahan, Timothy, and Cynthia Shanahan. “What Is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Does It Matter?” Topics in Language Disorders, vol. 32, no. 1, 2012, pp. 7–18. (2012)
- Surma, Tim, et al. Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival. Springer Nature, 2025.
Episode Transcript
Michelle Palmieri
Literacy is at the heart of social studies. So you can’t disconnect the two—or you shouldn’t—because reading and writing are just baked into learning about history.
Kristen McQuillan
Welcome to Season 2 of the History Matters Podcast. I’m Dr. Kristen McQuillan, Executive Director of Knowledge Matters. This season our hosts, Kyair Butts, Barbara Davidson, and Ebony McKiver, along with their guests, will tell the story of how elementary history instruction serves both literacy and civic goals.
Ebony McKiver
Hello, I’m Ebony McKiver, one of the hosts for the History Matters Podcast. Today, I’m sharing my conversation with April Croy and Michelle Palmieri.
Sisters and co-founders of Lumina Learning, April and Michelle are developing an innovative social studies curriculum called Tapestry. Drawing on their experience as former teachers, they have dedicated years to creating evidence-based educational resources.
In this conversation, April and Michelle argue that knowledge and inquiry are complementary, not competing priorities in social studies.They emphasize that students require a strong foundation of content to ask meaningful questions and engage in genuine analysis.
We also explore how literacy and history are deeply intertwined. The discussion highlights what elementary students truly need to become knowledgeable, engaged citizens—and underscores the growing importance of protecting time for social studies.
I think you’ll enjoy the conversation because you’ll hear from passionate experts who are very knowledgeable in both elementary ELA and history.
Ebony McKiver
So, one of the things I think that we’re seeing nationally is a growing recognition that social studies is much more than just memorizing facts and/or just preparing our students for a future government or civics course. I also think increasingly educators are talking more about social studies as a space where students are building knowledge and really developing a sense of identity and belonging, and how their community functions. At the same time, there’s this real conversation happening about instructional time, literacy priorities, and what students need most.
So I want to start with the big picture question. When you think about elementary students today, what do you think they need most to be getting out of social studies?
Michelle Palmieri
You know, we think about where we want our students to end up, we want students to have from their social studies and history education a really solid foundation and a grounding and understanding who—who we were, so that we can understand who we are and we can work together to create who we become.
And so, that’s a lofty goal. And all of that begins—if we break that down to beginning at the elementary level, even at the earliest grades, to me, what that looks like and what’s most needed is building the foundational frameworks and the schema through historical knowledge. Because understanding that and building that knowledge from the very beginning will allow students to add as they go, add depth.
As we know, knowledge begets more knowledge. So starting to make that sticky from the earliest days. And so I think really providing that strong historical foundation is one of the most important things we can do.
April Croy
I think so too, Michelle. And having worked in this space for a while, I know Michelle and I have seen an erosion of social studies time in the elementary space in order to give more time to the ELA work that Michelle and I have been spending the past 20 years doing.
And I think it’s to the detriment of everybody that we’ve done that. What happens if you give up social studies in the elementary altogether is you lose the cohesion and the through lines that you need in order to really build that knowledge and schema that Michelle’s talking about.
If you’re just dropping in a moment on westward expansion and then you’re dropping in a moment on the Aztecs, cool, cool. But I don’t see how all of that fits together. And so I’m not really doing that sticky durable learning. I’m not building the schema that’s needed in order to then have that strong foundation Michelle was talking about.
Ebony McKiver
So we’ve known for years literacy and social studies have been treated as really two separate conversations. We’re hearing a lot of research and practitioners that are talking about the role that knowledge plays in comprehension and the importance of giving students meaningful content to think about while they’re developing those literacy skills.
So my question for you both is, how do you think that relationship between literacy and social studies content connects?
Michelle Palmieri
You know, one thing April and I talk a lot about is that literacy is at the heart of social studies. So you can’t disconnect the two—or you shouldn’t—because reading and writing are just baked into learning about history.
And it’s what really drives—I I know there’s also a lot of talk about like, building critical thinking and building these analysis skills. And and I believe that’s important. But you have to have something, you have to know something to be able to think critically about it. And you do that through reading and writing, just as you do in ELA, it’s the same with social studies. So we’re really bringing in texts and text sets into the social studies space to deepen that knowledge through literacy.
Ebony McKiver
More educators are realizing that reading really isn’t only about those decoding skills, but that students also need the knowledge, the vocabulary, the context, and really again those opportunities to think deeply about the text and the content.
So this raises an important question for social studies educators. And for you all. How has the science of reading shaped or shifted the way you think about teaching history?
April Croy
[laughs] Well, I’m gonna say it certainly has shaped the way we think about teaching history because of our unique journey. Because we come to social studies through the path of ELA, that was a natural fit for us to think about how we can take what we’ve learned about the science of reading and apply that in social studies and help teachers know how to do that.
I think a lot of times when you’re outside of an ELA classroom, it feels a little like: Oh, how am I supposed to apply this in other places? And so, I’ve been most excited about thinking about vocabulary um because I feel like vocabulary is really an underpinning of knowledge. If you don’t know the words, you don’t know what’s going on.
So for me it’s both—it’s a combination of vocabulary arm of science of reading and then the element of the signs of learning where you come back and do that recursive practice with those vocabulary words to make sure that learning is sticky through do nows, through reading multiple texts that have that vocabulary in it, through multiple exposures with directions to get students experiencing that word enough times that it moves from short to long-term memory.
Michelle Palmieri
Another element of the science of reading that really has kind of informed our approach when we think about history curriculum is thinking about that the background knowledge.
And when we started digging into developing history curriculum, one of the questions we had was we saw some people that were approaching the sequence of instruction chronologically and some that were approaching thematically. And we dug into that and were thinking.you know, well, what do we believe? What do we want to do? Which—what would result in the best learning outcomes for our students if we approached historical events chronologically or thematically?
And so thinking about the way that background knowledge works and what we’ve learned from the science of reading is that it’s really important to have those breadcrumbs that—again back to that schema where you’re linking each new piece of information into something that’s been learned before.
And we decided that, okay, knowing that, especially at the elementary level, chronological—and a chronological approach is going to help students really be able to do that and make that learning sticky by building that chronological reasoning.
Ebony McKiver
So let’s shift the conversation a little bit. So, can you all speak a little bit to or about the critical role that content plays during social studies instruction?
April Croy
As Michelle and I have been really thinking about how to architect a curriculum that has strong coherence and through lines. One of the things we know is that it’s not that questions aren’t important. We think it’s a both/and thing. But they have to know enough to know what to ask. You know, so they have to have that background knowledge first. Otherwise, they’re asking, who knows what? And it’s not going to lead in a productive way. It’s not going to be a productive use of instructional time.
So having students first build the knowledge that they need and then teaching them to ask great questions, to dive deeper, to expand their knowledge and their content outward, that’s the right order.
So I don’t think Michelle and I see it as an either/or, like you’re either gonna do inquiry or you’re gonna build content knowledge. We think you need to build content knowledge in order to be able to teach students to have rich inquiry.
And we’re so excited about the opportunity to have a place to do inquiry with students. I think that’s a unique thing that social studies can offer in the classroom—that progression of open with wonder and curiosity, build the knowledge, and then close with research based inquiry that drives that knowledge further.
Michelle Palmieri
And another thing that we’ve really been thinking about is how important it is to spend time with texts that are worth reading in history. So that are worthy of deep study.
So just like we—just like in ELA, we want to be really careful about text selection and what we put in front of students. And I think the same thing holds true with texts that we put forward in history. And that can be written text, it can be visual texts really taking the time to notice and wonder and make observations because we believe that close observation is really the gateway to wonder.
Really allow students the time to, if it’s a text, read the text for literal comprehension, dig into what it means. Or if it’s a visual text, what are you observing about that piece? Because those close observations are what is—the thing that really drives that intrinsic curiosity that builds that motivation to learn more. And then, again, always coming back to that sticky, it’s gonna make it sticky. When you spend that time to pay attention, it’s going to provide the opportunity to make that learning sticky.
April Croy
And I think the other thing that’s been enlightening slash frustrating for us is as we’ve been looking across the states at the standards to help us figure out what content to teach, we’ve been noticing there are quite a few states that don’t have content in their standards at all.
Which I think is a little intimidating if I were a classroom teacher trying to figure out what to teach. To have—to be in a state where there aren’t content standards in my social studies space I think is really a challenge. Because it’s a big job to say, okay, we need to cover all of human history from the first time there were humans till 2026, but you can’t teach it all. So how are you gonna decide what to teach?
You know, making those good content decisions, if your state has those content standards, that’s wonderful. If not it’s something that we would strongly encourage schools to be thinking about together. What content knowledge do we want as a vertical progression from K through 5? What do we want from a content knowledge build perspective?
Ebony McKiver
Oh April, you just opened up a whole can of worms because, you know, it’s the question—
April Croy
[laughs] I know! Don’t come for me states without content standards! Sorry. [laughs]
Ebony McKiver
[laughs] You know, because I think we get into this idea of like local control and who decides what content is important and who teaches it and can we teach it with fidelit— you know and it’s—you’re right. And I think there are a lot of decisions that need to be made around what content needs to be taught, which is, you know, sort of why there’s this argument for a national set of standards. [laughs]
April Croy
And I think it’s also why there’s a little bit of fear to put our, you know, feet in the ground on it because that’s who we are as America. We have this ongoing friction between local and federal control and who gets to make those final decisions.
But then you have to go inside a fifth grade classroom and teach some social studies. So somebody needs to be working on making those decisions. And if the state hasn’t done it for you, then bringing your school district together, your school together to figure out what is important from a content knowledge perspective to your local context is a great starting place.
Ebony McKiver
All right, so the conversation that we’re having is great. And it is just so ripe with instructional practices that I hear, you know, in the ELA world. But I think for the folks in the social studies space, they may be slightly concerned and say, like: That’s a lot of ELA and that’s a lot of literacy.
How do we—how do we make sure that students are also getting, you know, those very history rich skills um while we’re combining the, you know, the ELA literacy, reading, comprehension practices with those social studies practices?
April Croy
A lot of times it is the same goal, just described slightly differently. And so I’m gonna start by responding by saying you need a great text set. So to do some of this—really, especially when you’re thinking about corroboration, continuity, and change over time, all of those kinds of things that you’re looking at in a social studies classroom build from a text set that allows for that.
And then in order to have those higher level conversations with students, first you have to start with literacy. They have to be able to read and understand the text that you’ve put in front of them. Get that under their belt, and then you move on to those bigger conversations about corroboration, about continuity and change, about perspective taking and whose voice is in the room and whose voice is being represented and whose voice isn’t and what does that mean?
Those are the kinds of conversations you’re having after you’ve built the knowledge, after you’ve developed their ability to understand what’s in front of them. And you do that through strong, supportive text, instructional strategies.
Michelle Palmieri
And yeah, I think that part of building those kind of historical thinking skills is also the way that you think about shaping, shaping the whole curriculum. If you think about that cohesive curriculum what you’re going to think about is where is it going? You’re going to be thinking about what is that task or what are students going to be doing with that knowledge at the end? So you’re building that knowledge. But you’re not just building knowledge for knowledge’s sake, you’re building towards something.
And so that thing that you’re building towards, that’s where it—you’re going to see that disciplinary difference because you’re going to be building towards thinking about causation, thinking about continuity and change, thinking about those aspects if you’re using that text for history, which is a little bit different than the task that you might create if you’re building an ELA unit.
Ebony McKiver
So I want to know based on these conversations that you’re having with districts, when districts are looking for or at history materials, what should they be looking for?
April Croy
So if you haven’t already, I’m gonna do a little shameless plug for the History Matters curriculum review tool. Oh my goodness, game changer! Michelle and I used the Knowledge Matters ELA version for quite a few years in our ELA space.
And when we jumped over to social studies, we were looking for such a tool, and at the moment when we first jumped over, it didn’t exist. And boy, were we so glad when it showed up. And though it says it’s for elementary, I’m finding it super helpful when I’m writing my middle school curriculum too.
So I think number one is starting with like, what does good history curriculum look like? What are the components of it? Are you teaching it sequentially? Are you building knowledge? Are you providing support? Are you providing strong texts that are worth studying? Not a textbook where they’ve, you know, dried out history into a list of dates and facts.
And starting to think about is my curriculum doing the work of building that knowledge in a way that makes sense coherently, with through lines sequentially? Is my curriculum full of texts that I would want to go home and read with my own children at night because they’re beautifully written and have something powerful to say about history? Is my curriculum leading through that foundational comprehension through to analysis? Is my curriculum building toward the kinds of habits of mind that we want good social studies experiences to be?
Ebony McKiver
So as we close, I’d love to zoom back out for a moment and play the role of genie. What’s your biggest wish or one big idea about teaching, reading, and building knowledge that you wish more elementary educators understood?
April Croy
My biggest wish is for time, dedicated time to teach social studies. The Fordham Institute has put out a research study that shows that giving elementary students 30 minutes a day of social studies actually improves their literacy skills. Imagine that! It’s like a secret weapon.
So my biggest wish is that all elementary school students could have a 30 minute block of time a day really dedicated to building knowledge and habits of mind for a rich social studies K-12 experience.
Michelle Palmieri
I couldn’t agree more. Time I think is definitely high on my list as well. And I think that, you know, for any elementary school teacher who is trying to bring more history and social studies back into the classroom and maybe is struggling with finding the time to do so, start small. Start small. Like there are beautiful, high quality read alouds, nonfiction read alouds on all kinds of events and people in history.
So if you are struggling to find that dedicated time, try switching one of your read alouds to something that’s rooted in history. Ask questions about it. And see where that takes you.
Ebony McKiver
To learn more about April and Michelle’s work, you can visit Lumina Learning’s website linked in our show notes.
Kristen McQuillan
This podcast is produced by Knowledge Matters. You can learn more about our work at www.knowledgematters.org.
To catch all of the History Matters Podcast, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.