Quick and easy ideas to spice up your lessons, brought to you by @russeltarr. I teach History but many of these ideas will be transferable to other subjects too!
Role play is a great way to get students talking through the key issues relating to a topic, especially if they can take rival viewpoints. In order to get students more engaged with this, I often use group work role cards or get them to make masks.
Another technique is to get students to design a sock puppet for their character as well as working with the other people in the team to construct a dialogue. Then, film the results. In this way, students are able to refer to their script as they ‘perform’ without feeling that they are spoiling the effect. It’s also particularly effective at overcoming the natural shyness of some students in front of the camera.
Links
Here’s an example from some American students on the Civil War:
Credits
This idea was suggested to me by Tom Browning at an IBDP History training workshop I attended in Oxford in May 2015.
Overview As a history teacher there are certain words and phrases which make me wince when I see them being used by examination students. I therefore use my classroom window word wall to list words and phrases which are not only useful, but also those which I do not want to…
Overview Although roleplay and simulation exercises in the classroom are an entertaining way of bringing history to life, it is too easy to regard them as stand-alone gimmicks to provide a little light relief to an otherwise tedious scheme of work. Even worse, it is easy to slip into the…
Overview Because "Top Trumps" is a simply game format to understand and play, this does not necessarily translate into an educationally worthwhile revision exercise. It's important to make it a game based historical facts and reasoned explanation rather than a mindless card-swapping exercise based on arbitrary ratings. Case study: The…
Role play is a great way to get students talking through the key issues relating to a topic, especially if they can take rival viewpoints. In order to get students more engaged with this, I often use group work role cards or get them to make masks.
