Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking

Absolving the guilty and punishing the innocent. Historian Elizabeth Reis [...] »

What do slave receipts reveal? Ever considered using similar documents to [...] »

Textbooks describe segregation in a few pages, but these artists share [...] »

Take a look at artifacts from the past—what might they be? Teachers model [...] »

Two letters from 1800 Tripoli lead into a story of piracy, privateering, [...] »
Teaching in Action

Sixth graders in Prince William County film their interpretations of the [...] »

Watch 4th-graders analyze cartoons about Virginia and Brown v. Board of [...] »
Using Primary Sources

Don't overlook song as a way of understanding the past.
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Explore the SOCC analysis technique with this great website.
[...] »Teaching with Textbooks

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

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

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

Turn your students into 'master chefs' by using learning menus that allow [...] »

Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases [...] »