Engaging the Past

This book presents a variety of strategies to help teachers rethink their relationship to the content and their students. Each chapter explains an active learning approach, practical steps for how to put the approach into practice, and ideas for how teachers can customize the strategy.

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Engaging the Past: Action and Interaction in the History Classroom provides practical steps toward using engaging strategies in the classroom to teach students to think historically. These strategies include an approach developed by the author called “The You Decide! Lecture,” and innovative ways to use board games and role-playing games in the history classroom. The goal is not simply to add window dressing to fundamentally dull lessons, but rather to re-examine how teachers think about students as learners of history. This book follows the growing trend within historical pedagogy to care less about content coverage and more about deep engagement, student learning, and the importance of historical thinking. The students in our classrooms today are the history teachers of tomorrow and awakening them to the exciting complexities of the past is critical to keep the study of history thriving.