Best Practices
Engage students and encourage historical thinking in K-12 American history classrooms.
Engage students in a creative learning activity that will teach them to understand the importance of multiple perspectives and historical context. Though this unit focuses exclusively on colonial and pre-Revolutionary America, the concepts and practices outlined in the activity can be adapted for other periods in history. FIND OUT MORE »
Read and Learn
Examples of Historical Thinking
Scholars, students, and teachers model historical thinking
What can a photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 reveal? Donald A. [...] »
![Photo, [Old hermit Roy Ozmer. . . ], 1957, Flickr Commons](http://teachinghistory.org/system/files/imagecache/thumbnail/Reading-and-Thinking.jpg "Photo, [Old hermit Roy Ozmer reading a book at his house : Pelican Key, Florida], December 1957, State Library and Archives of Florida, Flickr Commons")
Watch this flash movie for a peek at how historians read and question sources. [...] »
Donald A. Ritchie, Historian of the U.S. Senate, asks how a political cartoon [...] »
What does an 1853 daguerreotype have to say? Plenty, says Frank Goodyear, [...] »
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Teaching in Action
Teachers demonstrate promising teaching practices
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Using Primary Sources
Strategies for analyzing primary sources
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Teaching with Textbooks
Techniques for promoting historical inquiry
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the Civil [...] »
Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases. [...] »
Turn your students into 'master chefs' by using learning menus that allow [...] »
Class discussion and personal inquiry builds an interactive relationship [...] »
