Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
What was it like being a small farmer in the 1700s? Follow a tour group [...] »
How did the World War II internment of Japanese Americans happen? Historian [...] »
Jefferson, surprised by the Louisiana Purchase? Maybe not. Historian Leah [...] »
Make large-scale historic events like the Holocaust personal with artifacts [...] »
Historian Rosemarie Zagarri reads the Declaration of Independence closely, [...] »
Teaching in Action
High school teacher Joe Jelen combines roleplaying and critical analysis—by [...] »
An 8th-grade class analyzes letters about the Emancipation Proclamation.
[...] »Using Primary Sources
When visiting historical sites, sometimes you need a visual/emotional "hook [...] »
This source from Cornell University's Olin and Uris Libraries includes [...] »
Teaching with Textbooks
The language of history textbooks challenges English language learners and [...] »
Turn your textbook into a conversation by scanning its language for biases [...] »
Make the most of your textbook—engage students in close reading and analysis [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »
Show your students how to challenge the authority gap between the textbook [...] »