Best Practices | TeachingHistory.org

Welcome to Best Practices

Poster, "Stone walls and chains do not make a prison --- for Houdini," LoC

Work with early twentieth-century film as historical evidence. What questions do you need to ask?

Making Sense of Films

In Using Primary Sources

What do slave receipts reveal? Ever considered using similar documents to teach?

Slave Receipts

In Examples of Historical Thinking

Check out these sites for excellent primary source material.

Online Primary Source Collections

In Using Primary Sources

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

A Close Look at the FDR Memorial

Historian Christopher Hamner visits the original Franklin D. [...] »

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Teaching the Reconstruction? Ford's Theatre's Sarah Jencks leads teachers [...] »

Women's Suffrage Photographs

How did the women's suffrage movement use the rise of journalism to its [...] »

Close Reading of a Primary Document

On the website Historical Thinking Matters, a student reads aloud a [...] »

Women's Rights: Sarah Bagley Letters

What do these letters from a women's rights activist reveal about social [...] »

Teaching in Action

Teachers demonstrate promising teaching practices

Prologue to Studying the Emancipation Proclamation

An 8th-grade class analyzes letters about the Emancipation Proclamation.

Causal Reasoning

The fictional Alphonse the Camel provides insight for one classroom.

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

Making Sense of Maps

What questions should you ask when viewing maps as historical evidence?

Document Analysis Worksheets

Find the National Archive's worksheets for analyzing a variety of primary [...] »

Teaching with Textbooks

Techniques for promoting historical inquiry

Questioning Textbook Authority

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

Using Historiography to Analyze the Mexican-American War

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

Building a Conversation between Textbooks, Students, and Teachers

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

Learning Menus: Textbooks a la Carte

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

The Grammar of History Textbooks, Part I: Language Analysis

The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »