Emerging America’s Winning Strategies for Teaching History

Emerging America approaches learning and teaching about history as a lively, participatory, and essential endeavor. Since 2006, our programs have been strengthening teachers’ and students’ skills in approaching primary source materials—the starting-point for building historical knowledge—and using them to pose important questions, develop informed analysis, and produce communicative and well-supported written work. Our programs are supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History program and the Teaching with Primary Sources program of the Library of Congress.

Our core strategies for supporting effective history education:

• Analyzing primary source materials, the starting-point for building historical knowledge, including abundant examples on almost every page of this site, starting with
  SEE: Teaching with Primary Sources SEE: Historical Thinking: Featured Sources
• Making connections between local and national stories and collections, from the unparalleled digital collections of the Library of Congress to local community sources
  SEE: Library of Congress Online SEE: Historic Northampton or Springfield Museums (Online Exhibit
  Partners) SEE: Windows on History SEE: Your local museum or historical society!
• Applying an inquiry-based model of learning that helps students learn to pose and answer strong questions, consider multiple perspectives, and reflect on their own creation of knowledge
  SEE: Inquiry-Based Instruction with Primary Sources)
• Employing techniques for building literacy skills –such as clear, compelling writing and good analytical reading–through the study and critical analysis of historical content, in ways that support academic standards for history education
  SEE: standards for history education
• Spreading awareness of current thinking in the historical discipline through access to top scholars in various fields of American history
  SEE: Topics in History and Historical Thinking Benchmarks
• Creating highly effective integration of technology and digital sources through access to electronic collections, model online exhibits, instruction for building online student projects, and new social media for teachers
• Focusing attention on the needs of diverse student populations
  SEE: Engaging Diverse Learners with History