Get your students engaged into Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (or any other primary source document) by using a word cloud of the primary source and the spiral question technique (aka the Detective Analogy).  Watch this one-minute video…pause it as you see each prompt and think about how students could respond to these questions before they would [...]

It is always gratifying to know that good teaching strategies are timeless.  What does change in education is that we sometimes put new names on things that people have been doing for a long time.  The public receives them as “new” but good teaching strategies are not new at all.  It’s with that in mind [...]

Grouping students for lessons can sometimes border on the mundane.  It can be very easy to fall into a predictable manor by which we place students into groups for activities in class.  Part of what keeps a class interesting is unpredictability…the good kind! To that end, we have compiled twelve different ideas, four for each size [...]

In honor of the soldiers who have so bravely sacrificed their lives  for our country, we are proud to share a lesson that focuses on a case study for their courage: Vietnam. In a moving opening to this lesson, students view placards as if they were at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC and read [...]

The following Slide Share was used for the TCI webinar on flipping your classroom.  What other strategies, tips, and sites do you like to use for flipped instruction?   Three ways to flip from Brian Thomas

In our TCI webinar on this topic, we discovered that engaging students in debate or whole-class discussions involves a few steps and some rich resources. Here are the guidelines we shared: 1. Challenge students to discuss controversial and complex issues in small groups. 2. Create heterogeneous groups and a suitable classroom arrangement. 3. Prepare students [...]

Infographics are all the rage these days on social media sites.  They are visually engaging and are able to share so many data points that for teachers, they represent a great tool to use.   When using any type of visual data, it’s critical that good questions be constructed and mapped out.  The process, sometimes [...]

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Using primary sources with students these days is so much easier thanks to great sites like http://www.digitalvaults.org/ by the National Archives.  Like any other tool though, primary sources must be strategically used.  Here are four tips to keep in mind every time you get ready to use primary sources with students. Choose Wisely- Always think [...]

Having students use and find primary sources is a great exercise. See http://bit.ly/GGA4TB to get some practical tips on using them in class.