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More alternative active learning techniques!

 

Many active learning techniques can be used to engage students during the lessons.

Acting out

  • “Tableau” exercise. Students research an historical character. In class, they stand together, and remain still. Teachers tap and then interview them as the figures they are portraying.
  • Play-acting. Reconstruct a historical event. Or imagine how things could have turned out: what if x? What would have happened if y?
  • Radio-play

Storytelling

  • Write a newspaper article based on a set of source materials such as interviews, photographs, eyewitness accounts.
  • Write a travel guide to a country other than your own. Assignments should be sites that depart from the stereotypical attractions/image of said country.
  • Read an excerpt from a literary text from or about the historical period being studied, discuss, and write their own.
  • Experiment different kinds of writing/storytelling, including visual storytelling: scrapbooks, photo albums, storyboards, comics, short stories, newspaper articles, press releases, diary entries, letters to a relative, exhibition labels, etc.)
  • Create multimedia products: podcasts, films, animation, MovieMaker, ComicLife, etc. (If students are already proficient with the relevant software)
  • Prepare a “not-so-famous person report”.

Investigating

  • Undertake detective work, solve a mystery.
  • Headlines exercise. Show students different headlines covering the same event, discuss the assumptions and motivations behind each. Teachers can divide students into groups and give each group a different headline to analyze, before re-convening and discussing.

Hands-on

  • Study real materials: for example, by organizing a cooking class,  or practicing a form of local crafts.
  • Recreate historical objects: for example by using wax or dough.
  • For a lessons involving architecture, prepare a model together, produce architectural plans or drawings to understand a building and its history (such as decorative and architectural elements).

Beyond the classroom 

  • Students as oral historians: students talk to older family members, neighbours, shopkeepers, food vendors, so that they understand history not as a kind of academic topic but as part of life. Students will also perceive changes at the local level, such as changes in their own neighborhoods over the years.
  • Direct exchange or dialogue between students from different school areas or countries. Students could exchange email, photographs, oral histories, videos, etc. via an online platform.
  • Then and now: students look at old photographs, investigate where they were taken, take new photographs of the same location and reflect on changes through time, causes, and contexts.
  • Especially for lessons or units with contemporary relevance: students can research newspapers and magazines, find relevant clippings and discuss together.
  • Where appropriate, students can explore their neighborhoods, identify and document buildings or locations based on what they’ve learned about their neighborhood’s architectural / geographical history. Students can also talk to owners (if applicable, such as in the case of shophouses).
  • Develop potential collaborations with local arts centers and museums. Take students out on a visit, or have a visitor come in.

For even more inspiration:

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