Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
Analyzing a massive primary source? Divide it up! Teachers at the [...] »
Can you trust a biography? Historian Tiya Miles analyzes an 1869 biography [...] »
Historian Allida Black analyzes FDR's April 28, 1935 Fireside Chat. What [...] »
Historian Rosemarie Zagarri reads the Declaration of Independence closely, [...] »
Watch Suzannah Niepold of the Smithsonian American Art Museum guide teachers [...] »
Teaching in Action
Watch this 9th-grade teacher lead his class in planning, writing, and [...] »
High school teacher Joe Jelen combines roleplaying and critical analysis—by [...] »
Using Primary Sources
See this Flash movie for a peek at how historians read and question sources [...] »
Don't overlook song as a way of understanding the past.
[...] »Teaching with Textbooks
Make the most of your textbook—engage students in close reading and analysis [...] »
Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases [...] »
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »
Turn your students into 'master chefs' by using learning menus that allow [...] »