Teaching Strategies
Experiencing History Museums
Experiencing history museums can involve actual or virtual field trips to a museum, or bringing artifacts into the classroom to create a museum-like experience. The main goal of the history museum experience is to allow students to actively interact with the past by engaging with the artifacts of history. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 1.
Doing Simulations
A simulation is any learning activity that requires students to step into another person's shoes. These activities replicate to varying degrees real-life situations and/or time periods. Simulations require students to engage with the historical situation that influences their assumed persona, and as a result, the students retain more historical content. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 2.
Examining Historical Documents
Historical documents are primary sources that engage students in the work of historians and provide them with the opportunity to experience the past through the words and other records of the people who lived it. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 3.
Using Maps
Maps can provide students with important content information. They are also great classroom "equalizers." Students with a variety of learning styles can have their learning needs met through the use of map activities. Many students enjoy the hands-on aspect of working with maps. Students who are less able readers may excel in the more mathematical and pictorial work involved with using maps. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 4.
Interpreting Visual Media
Effectively interpreting and evaluating visual media is extremely important in our increasingly media-rich world. Students can learn to evaluate media to determine the developer's intent, and consider whether he or she was trying to impart a particular message to the audience. Knowing this information can help students identify ways in which the image or film may have been altered or staged for a particular effect or purpose. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 5.
Using Tactile Learning Activities
Tactile or kinesthetic learning may include both hands-on activities and physical simulations and role-play. It can be put to great use in introducing students to complex concepts in which there is a single influential factor with strong and varied connections throughout society. Here, essentially, students create a "living" concept map in which each student can play an active role in learning about or describing his or her own entity and its connections to other entities. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 6.
Analyzing Non-text Primary Sources/Propaganda
Analysis of non-text primary sources, particularly propaganda, asks students to wrestle with the idea of point of view. Students learn to determine why the developer of these materials made certain choices, and whether those choices were successful and/or detrimental relative to the developer's goals. Ultimately, students not only gain a better understanding of the materials studied, but a more holistic understanding of the historical period in question. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 7.
Breaking the Ice and Activating Student Content Knowledge
Every student, regardless of ability level, will have something in his or her mind when a new topic is introduced. Ice breaker activities help students to access this prior knowledge. The more students can be made to realize that they already have some understanding of new material, the easier it is to engage them in the topic. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 8.
Linking History and Literature
History students can learn a great deal, and often experience history in a very different way, when they encounter it in literature rather than only reading it in a non-fiction text. In particular, when a literature selection comes from -- and is about -- the time period being studied, it serves the dual purpose of being both a primary source and a literary resource. The setting, language, morals and mores, customs, and other trappings of society are on display alongside the fictional story the author is portraying. Literature can also go a long way toward helping students develop historical empathy -- that is, greater levels of personal understanding of the experiences of people from another historical era and/or background. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 9.
Exploring Oral Histories
Students who are exposed to first-person stories learn that there are many sides and viewpoints attached to every historical topic and event. This understanding can lead students to approach future historical work with a healthy skepticism and a greater willingness to seek out and work with multiple and often conflicting sources. Students can engage with oral history using by previously recorded interviews in audio, video, or transcripted formats or by interviewing an actual subject themselves. To learn more about this strategy, go to Session 10.