Best Practices | TeachingHistory.org

Welcome to Best Practices

Photo, Toy Cradleboard, Nez Perce National Historical Park, NEPE 1629

National Park Service lesson plans, teaching materials, and vibrant images reveal what historical objects tell us about history.

Teaching with Museum Collections

In Using Primary Sources

How do the buildings and artifacts at Mount Vernon reflect the lives of the people who lived and worked there? Educators explore the slave quarters and question what they find.

Slave Life at Mount Vernon

In Examples of Historical Thinking

Detail, KWL graphic organizer

Eighth-grade teacher Amy Trenkle keeps students on-task before, during, and after a museum visit with graphic organizers.

Teaching Strategies for Museums: Graphic Organizers

In Teaching in Action

Spotlight on Elementary Education

Oral histories and interviews are a unique form of historical documentation. This guide by Linda Shopes offers an overview of the various ways oral history can be integrated into classroom discussions. Though some of the techniques will have to be adapted for elementary students, the ideas Shopes presents are extremely useful. FIND OUT MORE »

Example of Historical Thinking

Scholars, students, and teachers model historical thinking

Visiting the George Mason Memorial

How can you get teachers thinking about monuments and memorials as secondary [...] »

My Lai Massacre Political Cartoon

Professor Meredith Lair examines a 1971 political cartoon and what it says [...] »

Women's Suffrage: Jane Addams's Article

Who was Jane Addams, and how is her article "Why Women Should Vote" still [...] »

Watch Smithsonian curator Barbara Clark Smith discuss John Smith’s Map of [...] »

Intertextual Reading of Two Primary Documents

A student demonstrates thinking aloud reading two documents.

Teaching in Action

Teachers demonstrate promising teaching practices

Reading and Thinking Aloud to Understand

Two practices help students to make sense of primary source documents on the [...] »

Students in the Community

Is a school an island? James Liou talks about working to integrate schools [...] »

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

Teaching with Museum Collections

National Park Service lesson plans, teaching materials, and vibrant images [...] »

Making Sense of Films

Work with early twentieth-century film as historical evidence. What [...] »

Teaching with Textbooks

Techniques for promoting historical inquiry

Children’s Voices from the Civil War

Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »

Building a Conversation between Textbooks, Students, and Teachers

Class discussion and personal inquiry builds an interactive relationship [...] »

Questioning Textbook Authority

Show your students how to challenge the authority gap between the textbook [...] »

Opening Up the Textbook

Make the most of your textbook—engage students in close reading and analysis [...] »

Using Historiography to Analyze the Mexican-American War

Allow students to see that history as we know it is interpretation, [...] »