4 Simple Engagement Hacks for Boring Social Studies Units

Kirsten 0:00

This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm Kirsten at the southern teach, an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies. I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.

Kirsten 0:47

Hi there, and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast. I am so glad that it is finally spring, and we are back into April, warmer weather. It's all downhill from here as far as weather is concerned. I love hot weather, so I am all for the warmer weather. I hope you are too, or I hope you are at least enjoying your week so far. We are going to be tackling a challenge that I know many of us have faced, and that is how to make those dry or complex social studies topics more engaging. Maybe you're teaching state history and your students are yawning through those early settlement lessons. Or you might be covering ancient civilizations, and instead of them being fascinated by the pyramids and the gladiators of ancient Rome, your students are completely disengaged. I hear you, some topics are more fun and some topics are not so fun, and they can feel harder to make exciting, especially if you're not somebody who particularly enjoys a certain topic. But today, I have a few simple engagement hacks to help bring state history, US history, World Cultures, and ancient civilizations to life for your students. So basically, anything related to upper elementary this is going to be just for you.

Kirsten 2:08

Kirsten 5:12

All right, now let's go into Hack number two, and that is to gamify the content. I love games, and I'm sure you may too or have loved games in the past, especially as a student. If students are tuning out, you can always make it a game, just kind of make it fun, make it something interesting. When you're adding that element of competition or problem solving or role playing, it can instantly change a boring lesson into something they actually might want to participate in. So a few ways you could do this is maybe some type of trivia challenge. You can do a Jeopardy style review game with categories related to the unit that you're teaching or talking about. There's always webquest activities where students are given an internet source and then they would answer guided questions about that topic. You could do some type of simulation where, let's say maybe you're teaching about colonial America. You can turn your classroom into maybe some type of Colony, or you might have different groups, different colonies or regions of the 13 colonies, and they have to barter and trade and make decisions about survival. So that could be super interesting, good tie in to economics, and maybe they either bring in or create however they want, maybe Play Doh, or they can draw it and use construction paper to create their different resources that are common in that specific region of the 13 colonies or the specific colony, and they have to figure out how to trade and barter all that good stuff. So that's just one idea. And then I know, when I was teaching fifth grade US history, we did -it was an assembly line simulation where students were they were now factory workers, and there was somebody who had to, you know, decide on who the leader was and who the child was and there were different parts of the simulation, but they had to create toy soldiers. So that was just like a really interesting way to show how conditions were in the 20th century at the industrial facilities that might have been in the north, such as like a textile factory or a toy factory. Now the last idea would be historical role playing. I mentioned the role playing earlier. You can let students take on the roles of different historical figures and perhaps debating real world issues. So maybe thinking about US Constitution, you have students that are role playing different delegates arguing over the structure of government, knowing what specifically the people that were debating on the Constitution, what should be added, what should not be added, and even thinking about the Great Compromise, as they say, because there were some different things that were going on that they didn't quite agree on, but then eventually they did, so that's always something to look into and explore more. So here is why gamifying content works. Games are tapping into student motivation. It makes learning feel like some type of challenge, or it's just more interactive, more hands on, rather than your typical lecture with notes and maybe a slide show. Those are definitely needed and important, but it's also important to make it fun and gamified. Plus you might have some competitive kids out there, it encourages participation from even your most reluctant learners so that's always a bonus. If you're looking for webquests, because I did mention that I do have a resource, and I also have a blog post and podcast episode on how you can implement webquests, whether you want to create your own or use WebQuests - I give you some information on how you can do that and learn more about it.

Kirsten 9:00

Okay, the last hack I have for you to make boring Social Studies less boring. You can bring social studies to life with hands on projects. So if you have students who are losing interest, you can let them create something. This is always really great. Hands on always does the trick, especially if they are pretty antsy and ready to get out of school, maybe especially around this time of year, April is kind of one of those months where it's like, oh, okay, we have gotten through most of it, and we still have a little ways to go, but not quite so just to kind of spark things up, you can always use projects. You can have even the most complex topics with projects more engaging, more tangible, so few ideas you could do, perhaps a state history map challenge. Give students an illustrated map of their state, and you can have them - you can see if they can label the different cities and natural features and highlighting any key historical events and landmarks within that state where it took place. Another idea is to have some type of ancient civilization diorama, have students build a mini replica of a Roman city, ancient Chinese village, or, you know, somewhere like in Aztec Mayan culture, thinking about, you know, what they've learned about those ancient civilizations, whatever you might be studying, you can have them create a diorama of what that would look like. It can be really entertaining to see what they come up with. There's also another idea here, cultural food festival. So if you are teaching about, you know, different regions of the world. You can assign each student, or you can have them pick a country and let them research or prepare a dish from that region, get them to bring it in, have a recipe card, taste test, all the fun stuff. You could even do it like, you know, how they have it on Food Network or Great British Baking Show. Make it a challenge, however you want to do it, make it fun. And then also, another idea could be to have a living museum. So instead of a traditional biography research project, you let the students dress up as a person of their choices, a historical figure. And they are presenting and talking as historical figures so it's like a class museum tour. If you don't want to have them dressed up, you can alternatively do something where they get like a toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll, and they can decorate that paper towel roll and have that but I think it's really fun to have a living museum component. It adds a little bit of extra depth to your typical biography research project. So hands on projects work really well, because when students are creating something meaningful, they are personally invested in the learning, and it allows students to kind of shine with their different learning styles, whether it's the visual spatial, or maybe they are big foodies, they love to cook and they love to create recipes and bake and all that good stuff - that's always really great to have in there. And also thinking about people who really love maps, they love, you know, learning about geography, it kind of hits on the different learning styles and personality types there. And if you're looking for some ideas as far as book projects, because that can be really hands on, depending on the type of project you allow them to do. I have a blog post and I have a podcast episode about this, and I will again, make sure to link these all in the show notes, so it's called Book projects in grades three through five, and how to conduct them. And then if you're looking for specifically PBL project ideas, I will also link that in there, because I think project based learning is a really great component to add in there. I give you several ideas in the blog post and episode.

So to recap, the four simple engagement hacks to make social studies less boring and more exciting are starting with a story where you're hooking students with narrative before diving right into the facts, number two, gamifying the content, where you're turning lessons into challenges, competitions, and role playing experiences, number three, using primary sources in a hands on way, you're letting students analyze real letters and photos and artifacts, newsletters, newspapers, all the good stuff, videos, audio, and number four, bringing social studies to life with hands on projects. So you're encouraging creativity through maps, dioramas, living history activities, project based learning. Social Studies does not have to be boring, it should be interactive, engaging and memorable. And by making those small tweaks to your lessons, you can turn even the driest topics into something your students will love. I hope you enjoyed this episode and stick around for more next week. I will talk to you later, and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.