With students constantly having active minds thanks to the integration of technology into their daily lifestyles, keeping their attention is becoming more and more difficult.
As a teacher, it’s imperative that you focus on blending new engaging methods with your existing teaching material to effectively teach your students about history.
1. Field Trips
One of the best ways to engage anybody is to bring them into the environment that they’re learning about. If you’re teaching about WWII history, then take your students on a field trip to a museum that has WWII artifacts.
Just getting your students out of the typical classroom learning environment and into a different visual environment can spark engagement.
If you can’t set up an actual field trip, consider embracing a virtual one. Many museums offer various virtual tours for students to learn about history when they can’t physically visit the museum.
Just engulf your students in a historical environment that allows their senses to connect with your lesson. Instead of just hearing you spout out information, they get to visually connect with the information as well.
2. Roleplay
If you really want to get engagement out of your students, you need to bring them into the time period. Roleplay is a great way to get them active and learning about various parts of history.
Consider having each student pick a historical figure from the time period and create a monologue complete with a costume. Students are more likely to become engaged when they experience their fellow classmates becoming fully engaged.
3. Interactive Treasure Hunt
Treasure hunts are a great way to get students to learn and test their knowledge in a more competitive environment. Consider using props from the era that you’re teaching, such as an old map for shipping discoveries.
When you work in Adobe Education, you can exchange knowledge and expertise about history lessons & projects involving classroom treasure hunts.
4. Turn History Into Stories
In the big realm of things, each historical period is essentially a story. Instead of requiring textbook reading, convert that into storytime. It’s much easier for a student to learn when they’re enveloped in a story as compared to reading line after line of boring text.
If you need some inspiration, take a look at many movies that have been produced about well-known historical figures. When there are visual, auditory, and emotional cues, your students can easily engage with the storyline. You can turn this historical figure into a living, breathing person that your students are able to relate to.
5. Group Debate
Part of understanding history is analyzing it from your own perspective. Group debates are a great way for students to stimulate their learning about the time period and raise questions about areas that they don’t understand. The more lively you can get your group, the more discussion that they’ll enjoy.
As a teacher, it’s your responsibility to assist your students in becoming engaged in learning about history. The above are five great methods that you can utilize in your classroom to get your students excited about history and learning as much as they possibly can.
