Teaching U S History Beyond The Textbook

Aligned with national standards, these strategies and sample lessons turn learners into history detectives as they solve historical mysteries, prepare arguments for famous cases, and more.

Written by a history educator, this exciting guide provides a unique approach that makes it easy for middle and high school teachers to engage students' critical thinking in history and social studies. Using a "CSI approach" to history, the author's six powerful strategies tap into students' natural curiosity and investigative instincts. Students become detectives of the past as they ghost-hunt in their neighborhoods, solve historical crimes, prepare arguments for famous court cases, and more. Each ready-to-use technique Demonstrates how students can use primary and secondary sources to solve historical mysteries, Includes sample lessons and case studies for Grades 5-12, Aligns with national standards, making the book useful for both teachers and curriculum developers, Features review questions, reflections, and Web and print resources in every chapter for further reading. Incorporate these strategies into your classroom and watch as students discover just how thrilling and spine-chilling history can be! Book jacket.

Describes a method of teaching history in which students act as historians, researching documents and primary sources; provides accounts of how this curriculum worked in actual classrooms; and includes sample handouts, and excerpts from student writings.

Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a fresh and more accurate approach to teaching American history.

James Percoco demonstrates how, using applied history, you can bring to life the people, places, and events of our nation's history, inspiring in your students a passion for the past.

A “fascinating” look at what students in Russia, France, Iran, and other nations are taught about America (The New York Times Book Review). This “timely and important” book (History News Network) gives us a glimpse into classrooms across the globe, where opinions about the United States are first formed. History Lessons includes selections from textbooks and teaching materials used in Russia, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Canada, and others, covering such events as the American Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Korean War—providing some alternative viewpoints on the history of the United States from the time of the Viking explorers to the post-Cold War era. By juxtaposing starkly contrasting versions of the historical events we take for granted, History Lessons affords us a sometimes hilarious, often sobering look at what the world thinks about America’s past. “A brilliant idea.” —Foreign Affairs

“Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled "Truth" that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself." —Howard Zinn A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important—and successful—history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective." What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students.