The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) defines the Holocaust as the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. During the Holocaust, German authorities targeted groups because of perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma (Gypsies), people with…

This article aims to discuss the use of postage stamps in everyday teaching. The first part presents a brief clarification of the basic philatelic terms found in the text. The second part presents the ways in which philatelic collections can be used in the teaching of specific subject matters. Part 3 contains five teaching suggestions as small…

Genealogy and family history projects can be an excellent way to foster students' sense of identity and connectedness to their heritage and relatives. Such activities can help students develop pride and knowledge in their identities and personal histories. Because knowledge of family histories is often valued within Indigenous communities, and…

National History Day (NHD), a non-profit organization based in College Park, Maryland, is widely known for the National History Day Contest, in which students conduct historical research and submit their projects at local and state levels, with top students invited to the National Contest. Participation in NHD demonstrates that students learn…

This article discusses authentic inquiry-based learning in a hybrid graduate course, "Teaching Hidden History," taught in 2015 and 2016. Students in this course created online history learning modules based on their own scholarly research. They defined their intended audience and crafted modules tailored specifically for those learners.…

Middle school students learned about their community when they created documentaries as part of a state bicentennial celebration. Students gathered multiple primary and secondary resources and worked with community members to interview them for their perspectives through video presentations as part of the inquiry process. Students work with local…

Efforts have been made among scholars from Japan, South Korea, and China since the 1980s--on both private and state initiatives--to narrow the gaps in their historiographies and to cultivate mutual understanding. This article offers an extensive discussion of the author's history project, "A Student Project of Writing a Common History…

Integrating local history with national or even global history can help students to find social studies more meaningful, to make connections between course content and their own lives and surroundings. In this article, we describe a project in which seventh grade students in Istanbul, Turkey, located centuries-old trees still living in their urban…

When projects are the spine of a course, they are systematically sequenced one after the other, and they do the heavy lifting of the course. They teach its core content and skills. The author has been testing this model of course design for several years, aiming for experiential learning that is tied to deep rather than superficial learning of…

Bjorn Wansink and his co-authors have aligned their teaching of a recent and controversial historical issue--the Cold War--in the light of a contemporary incident. This article demonstrates a means of ensuring that students understand that different cultures' views of their shared past are nuanced, rather than monolithic--a different concept in…

When eighth-grade students tire of writing, their history teacher must get creative to keep their attention for the next project. By applying a multimodal design to an old project, the teacher creates a new one that appeals to various learners and creative minds. The result is not only historical learning but also an opportunity to see how…

Recent technological advances have enhanced the accessibility of rephotography, a visual research method and project-based approach valued by social studies educators for engaging students in historical inquiry and place-based exploration. Rephotography projects capture photos from the vantage point of an old image to explore change over time.…

This article describes a high-impact learning project that combines geography, history, and ethnic studies. It describes the construction of the course, student outcomes, and the final and publicly presented collaborative project: the Social Justice Tour of Corvallis. Based on work in a small largely white town, this project presents a…

Timelines are a regular feature of almost all history education. Teachers and students create them on chalkboards, white boards, and an increasing number of web-based programs that allow multiple users to collaborate on a timeline's shape. Textbooks offer timelines to accompany the material they cover--chapter-by-chapter, students are told which…

Lessons in community building and cultural understanding are important aspects of a 21st-century education. Through such lessons, students gain the keys to societal understanding as they gain knowledge about their cultural and historical contexts, and use that understanding as a setting for exploration of deeper values, emotional experiences, and…