Spice Up Your History Class: 5 Strategies for Whipping Up Engagement
Five Strategies for Whipping Up Engagement
Middle school history class doesn’t have to be a snoozefest. Forget dry textbooks and droning lectures. This post is your recipe for whipping up lessons that will have your students devouring history like a plate of warm cookies. I’m talking field trips, music, pop culture, games, mysteries, and costumes!
1. CREATE AMBIANCE-SET THE MOOD WITH A FIELD TRIP
Who says you need a time machine to travel through history? With some imagination and tech magic, you can take your students on virtual field trips to ancient ruins, bustling medieval markets, or even the moon landing site. Tools like Google Maps Tour Builder and the Cultural Institute let you explore historical landmarks and artifacts in stunning detail. And to set the mood, don’t forget the music! Crank up some historical tunes or thematic pop songs to transport your students right into the heart of the action.
There is an activity from the Eduprotocols Field Guide called “Thin Slides.” I use this every time we start a new civilization. Students have a virtual field trip and then explore a collection of artifacts from the Google Cultural Institute. Each student creates a slide in a shared presentation about one artifact they selected from the collection. They add a picture, a word, and an icon on their slide. and then present it to the class. The icon piece is not part of the official “Thin Slides” protocol; I added it because I wanted them to make connections between the artifact and the five traits of civilization.
MUSIC IS ANOTHER GREAT WAY TO ENHANCE THE MOOD! There is no greater reward than hearing kids singing in the hallways about the Euphrates River or the fall of the Mayan civilization after a history lesson.
We love watching parodies of pop songs about History. Mr. Nicky Horrible Histories and The History Teachers are our favorite channels. Mr. Nicky does assemblies, too; from what I understand, his assemblies are super fun and affordable. We “close read” these music videos and use them as timers for vocabulary games. Students liked them so much that they wrote songs and recorded music videos. To read more about how I use music videos in History class, check out this post: Lessons That Rock: Using Music Videos in the Middle School Classroom.
2. MIX IN SOME MODERN MEDIA
History isn’t just about dusty old dates and faded photographs. It’s about the stories of real people, the decisions that shaped our world, and the echoes of the past that resonate in our present. Show your students how relevant history is by incorporating pop culture references, movies, TV shows, and even video games into your lessons.
If you have not yet discovered “Horrible Histories,” I highly recommend checking it out. Horrible Histories is a BBC program exploring the side of history they don’t teach you about in school! It’s a sketch comedy show; think Saturday Night Live! but for History. It’s based on the book series of the same name written by Terry Deary. My favorite skits are the Spartan Parent-teacher Conference and Wife Swap.
Iron Chef was a popular cooking series, and Jon Corippo used this pop culture connection to increase the fun factor of a jigsaw-style activity by adding a secret ingredient to group presentations. I took his Iron Chef Eduprotocol and leveled it up by adding a judge’s table. Each group gets a turn to sit at the judge’s table for another group’s presentation. Each judge at the table focuses on one element of the presentation and has a “menu” to help guide them in scoring. The judges have two plates in front of them, and at the end of the presentation, each judge holds up a plate and explains their decision, giving peer feedback to the presenters. Our superintendent dropped by our class one day when this was happening and was in awe of the level of engagement and the quality of the feedback my students were giving to each other.
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Who Would Win?
Who Would Win is a popular book series for young readers that uses imaginary battles to teach kids about animal characteristics. Think Shark vs Killer Whale. We analyze these books’ text structure and patterns and use what we learn to create similar stories about ancient civilizations. I like to use this as a review unit and let students choose two civilizations that we have studied. In the example shown here, a student created a presentation instead of a book because we were having virtual classes due to COVID-19.
So much of what we learn about in History impacts who we are as a society today. Students need to make those connections `to see the relevance of what we are learning about, and an element of pop culture can help create more engaging lessons.
3. A PINCH OF PLAY
There are so many ways to incorporate gaming into History! My first attempt at gamifying History happened during a unit on the Ancient Civilizations of India. For a final project, students created games about Buddhism and Hinduism. Their creative games included themes like following the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, Karma, and more. The project wrapped up right before Open House, so we turned our Open House into a Family Game night.
During a unit on Ancient China, my students created games about traveling the Silk Roads. These gaming projects did take up a fair amount of class time because students needed time to create their games, and then there was additional time for students to play each other’s games and evaluate them. Try vocabulary-based games like HeadBanz, Taboo, or Tic-Tac-Tell for a shorter, less involved project. There are a lot of great digital games, too, but I really prefer student-created games. If you want to try a student-created digital game show, check out my Are You Smarter Than A… I have a 6th-grade, 7th-grade, and 8th-grade version in my store.
Unlike traditional review methods, this game puts the students in charge. Using a step-by-step worksheet provided, they will create their own game show questions, including true/false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and vocabulary quiz questions.
To ensure a seamless experience, an instructional video is included, where students can learn how to identify key elements in a textbook, select relevant sentences, choose keywords, and use the printable guide to craft all four types of questions.
BINGO
Sometimes, watching speeches or documentaries can be a little boring. When I show a film in History class, I’m not doing it because I don’t feel like teaching that day. I am showing the film because I believe it will help students better understand the topic we are learning about. I get a little frustrated when students engage in off-task antics during a film, so I gamified movie-watching time. Sometimes, I give them a word bank and other times, I ask them to come up with words for their Bingo card. Either way, this is a super low prep way to engage students during a documentary film or speech in History class.
Games make learning fun, interactive, and engaging. Turn your classroom into a history playground with board games, role-playing activities, escape rooms, or even student-created games about the topics you’re studying. Remember, a little friendly competition can go a long way in boosting motivation and knowledge retention.
4. A HINT OF MYSTERY
History Detectives
Ancient history is shrouded in mystery, from Stonehenge to The Valley of the Kings. Instead of teaching a chapter from the textbook, why not pose questions and have students investigate? In this Sherlock Holmes-themed inquiry project, I turned my students into myth-busting history detectives. I presented the class with a set of “case files,” and they chose the most interesting one. They “solved” the cases and presented their findings to the class.
Unsolved mysteries and historical enigmas have a way of capturing our imaginations. Why did the Easter Island statues get built? What happened to King Tut’s tomb? Use these mysteries as springboards for inquiry-based learning. Turn your students into history detectives tasked with gathering evidence, analyzing different theories, and presenting their findings to the class. You might just spark a lifelong love of research and critical thinking!
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5. BLEND IN SOME COSTUMES
Whether walking like an Egyptian, recreating a Roman version of a Norman Rockwell painting, or finding Waldo in a geography lesson, costumes always increase the engagement factor of whatever you teach. Post-Halloween costume shopping is where I find the best deals on props, and I have a whole section of my supply closet just for costumes and props. They aren’t just for me either! Students use them for presentations and re-enactments (except for my hats).
Costumes don’t have to be expensive and elaborate. The best reaction I ever got from a class was when we did a marshmallow challenge on the first day of school. I entered the closet for a measuring tape and came out in a Stay Puft Marshmallow man ski mask. Several students referred to me as Ms. Marshmallow instead of Ms. Marshall after that lesson.
Costumes and props instantly signal to your class that something fun will happen, creating excitement about your lesson.
Remember, history doesn’t have to be dusty and dull. With a little creativity and these five engaging strategies, you can turn your classroom into a time machine, a pop culture playground, and a mystery-solving adventure all rolled into one. So, go forth and make history delicious!
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