Starting at the back: using backmatter to further social studies content

Purpose The purpose of this article is to help educators understand the affordances of backmatter in historical fiction to facilitate more engaged history/social studies experiences for young readers. Since backmatter often includes important historical information and context to augment the main story of any historical fiction book, it stands to reason that the backmatter may be important to integrating ELA and social studies when teaching historical fiction. Design/methodology/approach The researchers analyzed the backmatter of all 24 books in the I Survived series for recurring features and created instructional activities that can also apply to historical fiction titles. Findings Backmatter can create opportunities for deep historical and critical thinking. In order to do this well, it is essential for readers not to simply rely on the narrative but to understand a story's context – both the historical context and the evidence the author used to craft their narrative. This paper offers a number of activities that can be adapted across titles beyond the I Survived series to provide teachers with pathways to such instruction to help their students be more critical consumers of historical fiction. Originality/value Educators struggle with operationalizing backmatter in their classrooms due to a lack of guidance in best utilizing these potential instructional materials. This paper fills a need for teacher resources and education in elementary history/social studies.