This collection of standards-based lessons will guide middle and high school teachers while teaching the nation's history in a user-friendly, ready-made fashion.

During a time of standards-based instruction, Beyond the Textbook: Using Trade Books and Databases to Teach Our Nation's History, Grades 7-12 will fill the gap in today's middle and high school classrooms to simultaneously engage students in effective literacy skill exercises and teach our nation's history. Authored by three experienced former public school teachers, these ready-made lesson plans for classroom teachers and school librarians make planning easy for implementation in a social studies, history, or English classroom.

The book covers topics from Native Americans to the Louisiana Purchase, offering evidence-based reading strategies throughout that can hold adolescents' attention and develop their vocabulary and comprehension. Each chapter will include bibliographic information; suggested grade level; Information Literacy and National Social Studies Standards; before, during, and after reading strategies; database integration for classroom use; and suggested readalikes. Users will find the standards and evidenced-based research perfectly applicable in today's classrooms.

Carianne Bernadowski is assistant professor of education at Robert Morris University. She is coauthor, with Patricia Liotta Kolencik of Praeger's Teaching with Books that Heal: Authentic Literature and Literacy Strategies to Help Children Cope with Everyday Problems.