History Rocks!
Who remembers what it was like to be in the 4th grade trying to sit through a history lesson? Well, I certainly remember feeling tortured and I truly believed that anything that involved learning about history to be boring. It was not until my adult years that I realized how interesting it can be to learn about past events, pivotal moments and even how culture has evolved over time. I was not bored with the actual stories that were taught, but I was disengaged by the way the story was being told. Stephen Schiff stated, "At the heart of good history is good storytelling," and I couldn't agree more with this statement because the way information is presented to the audience can either increase or decrease the audience's level of engagement. As a young scholar, historical information was always presented to me as a lecture in a monotone voice. Now as an educator, one recurring goal I have set for myself is to increase student engagement, voice and interest in content areas that are typically considered dull and uninteresting.
Our fourth graders were working in EL Module 3, Unit 2 and learning about the American Revolution. In efforts to increase my overall student engagement with this topic, I decided to use several different resources in addition to the ones that were provided by EL along with teacher moves to accomplish this goal. One of the teacher moves that I use is playing war music in the background whenever I have to read a lengthy passage to students and allow them to take notes, while I am reading the passage to them. Allowing students to take notes on information they find important and interesting encourages students to take accountability for their own learning. Another resource that the students truly enjoyed is watching Liberty Kids on YouTube. This resource works great as a follow up or post lesson activity, after students have read about one of the topics such as the Intolerable Acts. Liberty Kids also increases students' level of understanding about individual events and topics in the American Revolution through a visual representation about what occurred. Lastly, I signed up for a DIA toolbox through the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DIA has a K-12 program for K-12 teachers that is called DIA Delivered. This program delivers tool boxes filled with a variety of books, artifacts, and other items to provide students with an enhanced learning experience. These kits sparked small group conversations, curiosity and assisted with developing students' ideas involving the American Revolution. If you are looking to increase your overall classroom engagement during your social studies lessons, then you should try playing some music, find engaging visual representations of the topic, and check out DIA Delivered.
