Teachers: what are some fun activities you have done with your history students to make it fun?

Question

Need some creative ideas for teaching history. Thanks. Or any ideas from other subjects that could be modified.

Answer 1

History is typically full of facts to memorize... not much fun. But, if you could turn your students into "treasure hunters", learning about history could be really interesting. Inspired by the movie, National Treasure, you could set up each periodic segment discovering "treasures" while going through the important facts of the time period. Use small toys (think orientaltrading.com), candy, other rewards as the "treasure" if you are teaching younger children who require instant gratification. For older students, modify your rewards by having something valuable to them (such as a homework pass, etc). This way, it would keep your students interested, have them working together to solve mysteries/clues, and most important... learning!! After all, the whole point is getting them to remember the information even after they have left your class. The more interactive you make the experience, the more interesting the information becomes.

Answer 2

I'm a student, and this isn't really about teaching new material, but for reviewing material, such as before a test day. This could be used with Jr. High or high school students. My history teacher did this and it was really fun, mostly because I won all the time!

You set up the classroom so the desks are in three or four vertical rows that face the chalkboard. The kids sit in the desks, and each row is a team. Draw two or three vert. lines on the chalkboard to divide it up between teams.

What you as the teacher do, is something like Jeopardy. You say the definition of the vocabulary---a person's name, a date, a term, etc. and the students have to run up and write the correct answer on the chalkboard.

For example, if the teacher said, "The first president of the United States", a student would have to write on the board "George Washington".

You assign points to either the teams as a whole or each individual person, or both. Whoever wins gets a prize, or extra credit on the quiz, etc.

Rules:

1. Whoever writes the correct answer fastest, and puts the chalk down, gets the point. Sometimes there are ties.

2. There can only be one person from each team up at the board at one time.

3. If the teacher can't read the answer, then it gets no points.

4. No tripping, grabbing, pushing, erasing other people's answers when they're writing, or calling out answers.

5. After the teacher has called out three questions, the students rotate. Each person in each column moves forward one desk, and the person in the very front moves to the end. This is so no kids have an advantage by being at the front too long. Obviously, a person in the first desk can get to the board faster than the person in the 9th desk.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Look at the History Alive program, this interactive teaching system has many activities and ideas for History.

Try reenactments, have students research events and act out the events, sharing key information while preforming. (A teacher i had in school did this when we studied decades, we called it the Time Machine, and we researched a decade, and presented as if first person view from that time.) Could modify to presintations, such as reports, projects, models, diagram,s etc...

Discuss, don't make history a read and writye, discuss, talk and share ideas. This will allow the students to interact with the facts and think on another level. Allways a plus as they will learn more when they have more complex thinking.

Concider bulition boards, study games, and other tools used to keep kids entertained yet learning. Concider having the studnets write the lessions, talking about what they think is releivet to them, mnay so the book facts which they repeat every other year, so find new stuff to teach.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

My brother made up a game years ago. He taught history and geography. His game was mostly for geography but you could adapt it. He would start by putting the name of a place on the board. It could be any city, state, country, or continent. For example, he would place Kentucky on the board. He would have all the kids stand at their desks and he would ask the first one to name another place that started with the last letter of Kentucky. That person would say "Yuma" then the next person had to say a place that started with an "A". If they couldnt guess anything, they had to sit down. He would write each word as they used it on the board. They could not repeat a word, if they did, they were out.

I use it when I substitute teach and kids of all ages like it.

Answer 6

Well, I don't know if this counts as history or more just as social studies. I teach 2nd and 3rd graders. To teach how the US government works (president, s.court, congress) we role played the passing of a bill. Granted I had to put some limits on it for them due to their age and time limits. They learned more from that than reading it or me telling them.

Other suggestions for making history lessons fun: role playing, having someone dress up as a famous person from history and let students interview him (A.Lincoln, etc), assign students to interview their grandparents or family memebers who immigrated to the country or were in a war. I guess it all depends on the age of the students and the topic in history.

Good Luck! Have fun with it!!

Answer 7

attempting to teach it right into a activity continuously makes it greater exciting. Our instructor used to divide us into communities and have been given us to do issues like putting a gaggle of enjoying cards with distinctive historic activities written on them so as or requested questions that we had to respond to. Or made a fictional worldwide map and gave each team a rustic and we'd could circulate around the class and sign treaties with various the different worldwide places on an identical time as asserting warfare on others. And whichever team gained might get candy or some thing. Or an added couple of % on the subsequent try.

Answer 8

try to in act what u r trying to understand others....
it works 100 times effective than regular teaching...
and also try to teach the history stories comparing it to the present situation which makes Ur teaching more attractive...change Ur facial expressions along with the context over all "GIVE LIFE TO HISTORY"

Answer 9

Re-enactments of important history moments

Answer 10

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