This website presents a valuable collection of resources for examining the Salem Witch trials of 1692. There are full-text versions of the three-volume Salem Witch trial transcripts, an extensive 17th-century narrative of the trials, and full-text pamphlets and excerpts of sermons by Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, and Thomas Maule. The site also offers four rare books written in the late 17th and early 18th centuries about the witchcraft scare, as well as descriptions and images of key figures. Explore…

Do your students groan that the textbook is boring or difficult? It may be that they are unfamiliar with the academic language that history textbooks use. Linguists Mary Schleppergrell and her colleagues developed a technique while working with middle school and high school history teachers and students. Students identify the grammatical elements of each sentence in a textbook passage and see how the elements relate. In the process, they not only develop literacy skills but also notice the choices textbook authors make in presenting historical meaning. Continue reading here.

Recently, the NHEC received a question from a teacher asking about resources for teaching Native American history. Consider the readers in the Bedford Series in History and Culture. Three of these paperback readers address Native American history, including The Cherokee Removal and The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. Each reader begins with an introductory essay that provides an overview narrative of the topic and its historiographical context. Following this essay are selected primary and secondary sources accompanied by orienting background information. More....

With iconic historical events such as the Boston Massacre it can be difficult to separate historical fact from myth. This lesson for 4th through 6th graders acquaints students with some of the subtleties of constructing historical accounts. It allows them to see firsthand the role of point of view, motive for writing, and historical context in doing history. The lesson opens with an anticipatory activity that helps illustrate to students how unreliable memory can be, and how accounts of the past change over time. Read more here.

John Trampush, coordinator for the Alaska Network for Understanding American History, writes, “For educators privileged to help implement a TAH project, perhaps the most important question that we can ask ourselves is: how can we make our projects even better? Each new TAH project funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement creates a new learning organization, centered on the understanding and teaching of American history. But these organizations can be very different depending on the vision and professional development (P-D) model that organizers use to implement their goals and processes.” Continue reading here.

Join the National Humanities Center online and learn about the Cult of Domesticity, a societal ideal promoted especially during the mid- to late-19th century. It provided a behavioral handbook, a 'code,' for middle-class white women in America that served as a way to value, to judge, and to control how they would both see themselves and be understood by others. The workshop will take place on October 28, 2009. The cost is $35. Recertification credit is available. More...