Artifacts help ... learning. Sometimes the artifacts are given to students at the beginning of the lesson; sometimes the students create them as part of the lesson.--Joyce Armstrong Carroll and Edward E. Wilson, Acts of Teaching (forthcoming)

Kids love real things, and real things make learning real. After giving a living-history portrayal of Abigail Adams--in which I discuss her lifelong habit of writing letters and her practice of" having her children carry a notebook and pen to note the interesting happenings of the day--I give each student in my audience a small notebook and pencil. The children cherish that small gift and remember Abigail Adams ever after as the "letter writer."

When teaching a unit about Greece, I share a replica of an amphora with the students and discuss the different types of pottery associated with that culture. Afterward, students line up to lovingly touch the artifact, and they always remember the different types of Greek pottery. In another lesson, students pore over a replica of a newspaper from the day that Lincoln was shot and carefully read every word.

The school library's realia and historical artifact collection is important. Kids love to see and touch a model of the Rosetta stone, when they are studying Egypt; barbed wire, when they are studying the West; and fossils, preserved insects, and rock collections, when they are studying science topics. It is difficult for classroom teachers to buy and house these types of collections. …