Welcome to Best Practices
Spotlight on Elementary Education
Example of Historical Thinking
Historian Allida Black analyzes FDR's April 28, 1935 Fireside Chat. What [...] »
Watch Suzannah Niepold of the Smithsonian American Art Museum guide teachers [...] »
Historian Christopher Hamner introduces educators to the World War II [...] »
What do slave receipts reveal? Ever considered using similar documents to [...] »
Professor Meredith Lair examines a 1971 political cartoon and what it says [...] »
Teaching in Action
An 8th-grade teacher asks: Was early 20th-century America a "melting pot" or [...] »
Is a school an island? James Liou talks about working to integrate schools [...] »
Using Primary Sources
Virginia Tech’s short video shows how to analyze primary sources and put [...] »
Check out these sites for primary sources grouped into sets by topic, grade- [...] »
Teaching with Textbooks
Class discussion and personal inquiry builds an interactive relationship [...] »
Help students identify with the past via children who lived through the [...] »
Allow students to see that history as we know it is interpretation, [...] »
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 [...] »