Good history lesson recipes work. This one mixes pictures that demand explanation with three compelling stories threaded together with whole-class discussion and primary source analysis, topped off with a direct connections to students’ lives today.

Practicing reading with this one paragraph helps students recognize the broad horizon of options available to writers when they make choices to use certain people, quotes and events to give you an understanding of the past.

Primary and Secondary source identification is a staple of history lessons, but like history, the difference isn’t as clear cut as it first appears. This simple exercise will generate interesting discussions with students and adults.

Shifting back and forth between the book and the primary sources upon which its drawn often yields interesting results. Not only does this capture dozens of primary sources for lessons, along with side stories, and powerfully illustrative quotes, it also exposes a book’s mistakes.

Labeling  people, events and eras marks a difference between the history as it operates as discipline and history as it appears in the classroom.  The vocabulary we use to talk about the past has a historiography all its own.   Exposing students to the power-plays that advanced one label over another is admittedly harder and more abstract than memorizing a list of terms, but it is far more rewarding.