Making History Alive

Strategies to use in history are:
The EPIC Strategy which allows students to make connections between themselves and the topic of history that they are going to be learning about

Using Primary Sources and Documents allows the students to have a first-hand experience of what happened in history

Using Artifacts to get the students engaged in the lesson that you are going to be teaching.  Teaching with artifacts is a good way to.  Hands-on activity

Body Sculpting- acting out scenes in history with their bodies
Role-playing- giving students certain roles and having them act out

Local History- relating the history to the students' community and what is around them.  Have the students' interview people in their community or go to different places of historical importance in their community.

As future social studies teachers, we are always looking for ways to make social studies more engaging and exciting for our students.  In the reading from our textbook and an article that I read, I learned different ways that I could teach social studies to my students in an engaging way.  One of the main ways to get students engaged in history is to use primary sources and documents.  By using primary sources and documents the students are getting a first-hand experience of what happened in history and they are more interested in learning about it.  Another strategy to get the students involved in learning is to use artifacts.  By doing an activity like an artifact bag the students are getting to discover different objects that were used throughout a certain period of social studies.  It is a good activity because it is a hands-on activity and some students are better learners when they have a hands-on activity.  The students are also getting to see how these artifacts were important during the time period.

  
A good strategy to use with younger students and also older students as well to help them understand a certain scene or battle that happened in history is to have them do role-playing or do body sculpting.  In both of these strategies the students act out a scene or battle in history and through this the students gain a better understanding by doing instead of just reading about it from a textbook.  When students are engaged and participating in the lesson they are more likely to remember the information as opposed to when they just read it out of the textbook.  One other strategy that could be used to help make history more exciting for students is connecting it to their local history.  Relating the history to the students' community and what is around them.  Have the students' interview people in their community about the community used to be like back in the day.  Have the students go to different places of historical importance in their community.  Another strategy to use to have students make connections is the EPIC Strategy.  This strategy involves having the students make connections between themselves and to the topic of social studies that they are learning about.  When students are able to make connections to what they are learning about they are more engaged learning and they are also better able to understand the material that is being taught.