Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
Donald A. Ritchie, Historian of the U.S. Senate, asks how a political [...] »
Written primary sources only tell you so much. To learn about history that [...] »
Use autobiographies to deconstruct views of slavery and historical heroes. [...] »
Analyzing a source requires context for a more complete understanding.
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Whitman Ridgway outlines some of the context in which the Bill of Rights was [...] »
Teaching in Action
How did people in the North feel about John Brown after his raid on Harpers [...] »
High school teacher Joe Jelen combines roleplaying and critical analysis—by [...] »
Using Primary Sources
Work with early twentieth-century film as historical evidence. What [...] »
This website by the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery will help students [...] »
Teaching with Textbooks
Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases [...] »
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Class discussion and personal inquiry builds an interactive relationship [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »
Allow students to see that history as we know it is interpretation, [...] »