Today was our first day learning about methods and strategies for teaching Social Studies in the classroom. Dr. Pangan informed us that we would be observing and learning over 30 engaging strategies for S.S.! In addition to this, we learned about school safety and the importance of following protocol in case of an emergency. The greatest lesson I learned for school safety is to remain calm so that children don't sense panic or chaos.
To begin class, Dr. Pangan sat us in a circle, distributed plastic gloves, and passed around an artifact. We were only allowed one question per turn and our question had to have a yes or no answer. This activity automatically sparked interest in my classmates and I because the artifact was just an ordinary, black shoe. After deductive reasoning, we discovered the shoe was of great significance to Dr. Pangan. She had been wearing those shoes during the terrorist attack of 9/11 in New York City. This impactful event happened when I was in third grade, which is crazy to think that it is HISTORY. That momentous event is written in Social Studies books! Many children now were not alive for 9/11 and I feel like it happened just a couple of years ago. HISTORY IS NOW! It's every day. Every passing minute.
King Moctezuma sitting on his throne.
Spanish conqueror, Cortes, trying to take over the Aztec empire.
My favorite activity of the day was Role Play. Instead of having students read numerous paragraphs about historical events and answer repetitive questions, a teacher can have them act out each scene with costumes, props, and different settings. The narrator will theatrically read each paragraph of the text while stopping to allow time for the characters to act out the scene. Without fault, students will retain more information this way. --------------------->
Here are 25 Engaging Strategies that you can incorporate into your classroom.
Furthermore, students can use pictures to describe a major historical event. The pictures will be extremely beneficial for students who need visual reminders of past events, rather dates and confusing words.