Many teachers struggle making social studies interesting for the students to learn, because some of the students thought that social studies is “boring”. At the beginning of the school year, only few students typically name social studies as his/her favorite subjects, most of them do not even understand what the subject is about. If you feel students are not as engaged in your Social Studies lesson as you would like them to be, sometimes the smallest change can make a big difference. Here are some tips that can be used to make Social Studies more interesting and engaging:
Bring a Historical Topic to Life. A picture is truly worth a thousand words. We live in a visual world, and for many students, seeing a piece of art, a photograph, or another visual image can go far in catching their interest, conveying important information, or bring a historical topic alive. Show student a powerful image about the historical event, allow students to practice being critical viewers by analysing the picture. Let the students imagine critique and predict what is happening in the picture. Let the students give their ideas about what the picture is trying to convey, and after that discuss as a class what happened before, during and after the photograph was taken. After this the students will become critical viewers and can interact with the images to demonstrate what they have learned.
Draw Students in with Technology. Technology is everywhere. It affects our life since it plays a big role in our everyday living. It makes so many things possible in just a click, like socializing, connecting and communicating with other people who are very far from us. It also engages us to new learning since we can find many information from internet but we have to remember that not all the details that can be found from internet are accurate and true. Since so many students nowadays love technology, they will surely be interested if the teacher will utilize it in teaching. Of course, we have to ride on what the students love if we really want them to be engaged in what we are teaching. For example, let the students recreate the scenario on a film using their phones. The students could then act and portray the characters and let them take videos highlighting the different parts of the history. The teacher then can compile those videos and use them in the following school year. Another, we could use facebook in teaching social studies. Facebook is asocial networking sitethat makes it easy for us toconnect and share with our family and friends online. We could use it to create profiles about important people in history. Explain to them on how they will make a profile by adding picture and videos about the person. It is more engaging and interesting if they will do it by themselves and seeing things rather that by reading from books. Technology helps students take more control over their own learning. They will learn how to make their own decisions and actually think for themselves.
Inculcate Creativity in their activities. Hands on activities are more interesting than worksheets. Have the students discover their creativity by doing different hands on activities. The teacher should give rubrics so the students will know what criteria have the highest value. Some examples of hands on activities that can be used in social studies instruction are brochures and postcards. One way to energize teaching about Philippine Regions or historical places in the Philippines is to have students look at them as travel destinations. The first step is to bring an example of travel time brochure. Then, based on places that you are teaching, ask the students, either individual or in groups, to create travel brochures for a particular location. The brochure should be informative; it includes the travel agency, transportation they will use, why this place might attract visitors, and other information about a particular location. The brochure should be interesting, exciting, creative and informative. Students can involve drawings or pictures from magazines, or from the internet. Another is making a postcard. Postcard is a card wherein message may be sent by mail without an envelope and that often has a picture on the side. Have the students create postcard from a unit of time or about an event. The postcard should be written as if the student actually lived at that time and should explain his daily life to a faraway friend. The postcard should be historically accurate; on that rule the students will be motivated to conduct some research about the particular event or period of time. Through these activities, our students will surely participate in our discussion since they enjoy what they do.
Teachers should think of different strategies on how they will engage the student in social studies instruction. Challenge the students, let them think, talk, and do history on their own version. Give them opportunity to decide, walk in another person shoes for a while and use their imagination wisely.
By: HAZEL KIM C. MAÑALAC | Academy of Queen Mary School Inc.
