Throughout the Teaching the Civil Rights Movement with the Georgia Historical Marker Program teacher training course, participants constructed Focused Inquiries based on the Inquiry Design Model. Each inquiry is a standards-based (GSE) investigation of the struggle for civil and human rights in Georgia. Featuring historical markers from the Georgia Historical Marker Program’s Georgia Civil Rights Trail and primary sources from GHS and the Library of Congress, these inquiries enhance student understanding of an era in which religion, education, politics, and free enterprise intersected to end Jim Crow and secure civil rights for African Americans. Use these classroom-ready investigations to explore local, state, and national stories from Reconstruction through the late twentieth century in elementary and middle school classrooms.

A Focused Inquiry is an adaptation of the Inquiry Design Model from C3 Teachers. The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) is a distinctive approach to creating curriculum and instructional materials that honors teachers’ knowledge and expertise, avoids overprescription, and focuses on the main elements of the instructional design process as envisioned in the Inquiry Arc of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013). (C3teachers.org).