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

High school teacher Joe Jelen combines roleplaying and critical analysis—by having students roleplay critics of the New Deal.

FDR's Fireside Chats

In Teaching in Action

Make large-scale historic events like the Holocaust personal with artifacts and stories from individual human lives.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Personalizing History

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

Paintings About Segregation

Textbooks describe segregation in a few pages, but these artists share [...] »

Slave Life at Mount Vernon

How do the buildings and artifacts at Mount Vernon reflect the lives of the [...] »

Smithsonian American Art Museum: "Westward the Course of Empire"

Watch Suzannah Niepold guide TAH teachers through analyzing the differences [...] »

Women's Suffrage: Burroughs's Article

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

A Close Look at the World War II Memorial

Historian Christopher Hamner introduces educators to the World War II [...] »

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 [...] »

What Does It Mean to Be an American?

An 8th-grade teacher asks: Was early 20th-century America a "melting pot" or [...] »

Using Primary Sources

Strategies for analyzing primary sources

Bringing History Home’s SOCC Analysis Technique

Explore the SOCC analysis technique with this great website.

Transform film from a source of entertainment to a piece of historical [...] »

Teaching with Textbooks

Techniques for promoting historical inquiry

The Grammar of History Textbooks, Part I: Language Analysis

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

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 [...] »

The Grammar of History Textbooks Part II: Questioning the Text

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