Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
Textbooks describe segregation in a few pages, but these artists share [...] »
Watch Briana Zavadil White introduce teachers to portraits of inventors and [...] »
How do the speeches of Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper [...] »
Historian Christopher Hamner visits the original Franklin D. [...] »
Watch Smithsonian curator Barbara Clark Smith discuss John Smith’s Map of [...] »
Teaching in Action
The fictional Alphonse the Camel provides insight for one classroom.
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Two practices help students to make sense of primary source documents on the [...] »
Using Primary Sources
Check out these sites for primary sources grouped into sets by topic, grade- [...] »
National History Day identifies secondary sources along with [...] »
Teaching with Textbooks
Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Show your students how to challenge the authority gap between the textbook [...] »
Make the most of your textbook—engage students in close reading and analysis [...] »