Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
Watch Smithsonian curator Barbara Clark Smith discuss John Smith’s Map of [...] »
How do the buildings and artifacts at Mount Vernon reflect the lives of the [...] »
Is reading a piece of historic literature once enough? Not if you want to [...] »
See sourcing in action, as a historian reads a document about the Scopes [...] »
Close observation and an inquisitive mind are all the tools you need to [...] »
Teaching in Action
Ninth-grade teacher Jamie Kimbrough asked her students to stand in Kennedy's [...] »
High school teacher Joe Jelen combines roleplaying and critical analysis—by [...] »
Using Primary Sources
The National History Day’s guidelines for defining and locating [...] »
Use this guide developed by PBS and the Antiques Roadshow to teach [...] »
Teaching with Textbooks
Class discussion and personal inquiry builds an interactive relationship [...] »
Allow students to see that history as we know it is interpretation, [...] »
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Show your students how to challenge the authority gap between the textbook [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »