Blueprint for Student Learning

NCHE believes that history belongs as a core discipline in the K-12 curriculum. Schools should promote the most effective practices in teaching history and encourage the deepest student learning in the classroom, so that all will develop and utilize History’s Habits of Mind.

Excellent history
teaching gives students opportunities to:

Think analytically and deeply by:

Posing and framing appropriate questions of the past
Gathering and evaluating a wide variety of evidence
Recognizing continuity and detecting change over time
Utilizing chronology to examine cause and effect relationships
Providing multiple paths for engagement with events, eras, concepts and assumptions in the past
Drawing and combining reasonable inferences from a variety of sources to build an understanding about complex questions.

Read widely and critically by:

Examining, interpreting and contextualizing primary source documents, focusing on authorship, purpose and intended audience of each source
Identifying and comparing historical interpretations from a variety of secondary sources
Utilizing broader understanding to discern subtext in both primary and secondary sources.

Write cogently and compellingly by:

Developing and defending evidence-based historical arguments
Utilizing multiple perspectives for comprehensive explanations
Practicing and cultivating a wide variety of different types of writing.

NCHE

The National Council for History Education provides professional and intellectual leadership to foster an engaged community committed to the teaching, learning, and appreciation of diverse histories.

National Council for History Education
13940 Cedar Road, #393
University Heights, OH 44118
www.ncheteach.org
nche@nche.net
Phone: 240-888-4105

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