Best Practices | TeachingHistory.org

Welcome to Best Practices

Ninth-grade teacher Jamie Kimbrough asked her students to stand in Kennedy's shoes. How did they decide to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Recreating the Cuban Missile Crisis

In Teaching in Action

graphic, detective, 13 Nov 2008, Flickr CC

Learn how to teach your students historical thinking with this informative video from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Thinking Like a Historian

In Using Primary Sources

Historian Rosemarie Zagarri reads the Declaration of Independence closely, taking time to define its context and its effects.

Declaration of Independence

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

Women's Rights: Sarah Bagley Letters

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

An Introduction to Historical Thinking and Reading

Watch this flash movie for a peek at how historians read and question [...] »

Seeing (and Engaging in) Historical Thinking: A Tutorial

This interactive tutorial models a four-step process for analyzing [...] »

Women's Suffrage: Burroughs's Article

In the struggle for women's suffrage, how did African American women [...] »

National Portrait Gallery: Teaching with 19th-Century Portraits

Watch Briana Zavadil White introduce teachers to portraits of inventors and [...] »

Teaching in Action

Teachers demonstrate promising teaching practices

Teaching the Bill of Rights

Daunted by teaching the Bill of Rights and its complex vocabulary to [...] »

Using Maps as Primary Sources

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

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

Local History and Student Historians

So you don't live near Gettysburg or the Alamo—can you still teach with [...] »

Making Sense of Oral History

Work with oral history interviews as historical evidence.

Teaching with Textbooks

Techniques for promoting historical inquiry

The Grammar of History Textbooks Part II: Questioning the Text

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

Learning Menus: Textbooks a la Carte

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

Children’s Voices from the Civil War

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

Using Historiography to Analyze the Mexican-American War

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

Questioning Textbook Authority

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