Best Practices | TeachingHistory.org

Welcome to Best Practices

Introducing your students to primary sources for the first time? Watch fourth-grade teacher Marty MacKenzie guide her students through analyzing John White's drawings of the Powhatans.

How to Introduce Students to Primary Sources

In Teaching in Action

Photo, me & Jackie's antique shopping field trip, tray, 2010, Flickr

Use this guide developed by PBS and the Antiques Roadshow to teach about material culture.

Integrating Material Culture into the Classroom

In Using Primary Sources

Teaching the Reconstruction? Ford's Theatre's Sarah Jencks leads teachers through Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and follow-up activities.

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

In Examples of Historical Thinking

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

Japanese American Internment: Executive Order 9066

How did the World War II internment of Japanese Americans happen? Historian [...] »

Massive Resistance Political Cartoons

Watch J. Douglas Smith discuss the Massive Resistance policy enacted by U.S [...] »

Japanese American Internment: Ansel Adams Photos

If the U.S. interned you and your family, how would you respond?

Visiting the George Mason Memorial

How can you get teachers thinking about monuments and memorials as secondary [...] »

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

Historical Context and Roleplaying

A 5th-grade teacher teaches historical context through roleplaying [...] »

Integrating Language Arts and History

Elementary teacher Karen Eanes hooks her students with engaging historical [...] »

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

Making Sense of Films

Work with early twentieth-century film as historical evidence. What [...] »

Primary Sources: What Are They?

The National History Day’s guidelines for defining and locating [...] »

Teaching with Textbooks

Techniques for promoting historical inquiry

Building a Conversation between Textbooks, Students, and Teachers

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

Opening Up the Textbook

Make the most of your textbook—engage students in close reading and analysis [...] »

Using Historiography to Analyze the Mexican-American War

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

The Grammar of History Textbooks, Part I: Language Analysis

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

The Grammar of History Textbooks Part II: Questioning the Text

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