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

What do slave receipts reveal? Ever considered using similar documents to [...] »

Pockets from the Past: Daily Life at Monticello

What do the contents of pockets say about their owners? TAH teachers model [...] »

Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

Is reading a piece of historic literature once enough? Not if you want to [...] »

Smithsonian American Art Museum: "Acehlous and Hercules"

Analyzing a massive primary source? Divide it up! Teachers at the [...] »

Monticello: Jefferson's Experiment

TAH teachers get an introduction to Monticello as Thomas Jefferson's ' [...] »

Teaching in Action

Teachers demonstrate promising teaching practices

Teaching Historical Interpretation through Planning Documentary Films

Watch this 9th-grade teacher lead his class in planning, writing, and [...] »

Using Maps as Primary Sources

A 4th-grade teacher shows strategies for encouraging and supporting student [...] »

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

The Civil War in Art: Teaching and Learning Through Chicago Collections

Integrate these two guides into your curriculum to help students develop [...] »

Media Analysis Tools

These worksheets from the Library of Congress help students analyze primary [...] »

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 [...] »

Children’s Voices from the Civil War

Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »

The Grammar of History Textbooks, Part I: Language Analysis

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

Using Historiography to Analyze the Mexican-American War

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

Learning Menus: Textbooks a la Carte

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