Textbook Alternatives Designed for Active and Engaged learning
It’s sometimes really easy to get into a stale routine when teaching history. Read, take notes, take the quiz. Read, take notes, take the quiz. Rinse and repeat until test time. A lot of the traditional curricula in middle school are structured in this way. Though it is really encouraging that people are now creating more exciting and engaging lessons to teach history and social studies. The best lessons in your middle school history class include history projects that are very student-centered.
But I know that creating stellar social studies lessons can be really intimidating. Somehow we think the only way to do so is by knowing a lot about the topic. We put so much pressure on ourselves. I think it’s one of the main reasons why we white knuckle clutch those middle school history textbooks. We don’t even know what we don’t know. How can we engage and teach our students?!
That’s why the research on student engagement is really empowering. Our learners today actually don’t expect us to know everything. Instead, they want to see how we learn things and to learn together with us.
Whew! Because even people with Ph.Ds in history actually don’t know everything there is to know about history. So having that kind of expectation on yourself is not realistic.
5 Keys to Increasing Student Engagement According to Researchers
A lot of research has focused on student engagement. They’ve done extensive interviews and surveyed thousands of students. Researchers have tracked student performance and success based on student engagement. My previous article has a summary of some of their most important findings. You can go there for more details and for links to some of the research. But here’s a quick recap:
5 Keys to Increasing Student Engagement According to Researchers
- Interaction – Students want collaborative learning opportunities.
- Exploration – Students want to explore their world and find answers for themselves.
- Relevancy – Students engage better in meaningful activities that can directly apply to their life.
- Proper Tech Use – It’s important for teachers to use technology in a way that supplements their teaching and reinforces exploration and interaction.
- Engaging and Challenging Instruction – Students don’t want watered down curricula or low quality instruction and no discipline or consequences. They want rigor and challenge delivered in an engaging way. They want to design their own learning.
This research is really exciting! It gives us permission not to know everything right away. Instead we should act as co-learners with our kids and guide them through the process of exploration and discovery.
10 Middle School History Project Ideas to Increase Student Engagement
So I’ve come up with a list of ten highly engaging middle school history projects you can do with your learners in class. These activities are designed around student exploration and teachers acting as co-learners.
I’ve done quite a few articles focused on simple and practical ways to engage your students. So in this list, I am focusing more on bigger middle school history projects. These are intended to be more like units of study. I only have space to give a brief description for each, but I’ll work on more specific and detailed curricula/articles for the future (Join the mailing list to get updates ^_^).
History Debates
This by far has been my and my students’ favorite history project in the classroom. Students beg to do history debates. It’s very student driven, truly collaborative, and rigorous. It reinforces and develops many important skills our kids need today: research and information literacy, communication, persuasion, claim-evidence connection, logic, evaluation and so much more.
It’s important to note that the goal is to explore a topic using a structured and purposeful approach. Students know that their research and arguments will be actively evaluated and challenged by their own peers. So there’s quite a bit of pressure and competition.
I know the Socratic Seminar format is also great for exploring and discussing topics. But I like the focus, structure, and intensity of the debates. Students keep each other on their toes as far as providing researched evidence for their claims. They also get a lot of feedback from their peers on how they communicate ideas, their logic and thought process, and the quality of their research.
Remember it’s not supposed to be perfect. The beauty of these debates is that they are student driven. Students determine the topics to focus on. They give each other homework. Then they assess their own work based on quality and logic. They give each other feedback. Your role as the teacher is to guide them and give them a good rubric to help them.
When doing these debates, I’ve been most surprised and rewarded by how much some of my more anxious or shy kids have blossomed. Some of them take on leadership roles and become the group expert, whether it’s in research or strategy. There’s just so much more room and opportunities for each child to shine under this model.
History Documentaries
For this history project, you can have the kids work in pairs or in groups of three. It’s also possible as an individual project. It’s a great way to have students explore and research a topic that they’re interested in. For example, when studying the 1920s, I’ve had students create documentaries on fashion, baseball, and comic books. I gave brief lessons and readings that provided an overview of the age. These lessons gave students ideas to explore.
It’s very important to come up with a rubric. I recommend having the kids help you make one so that they really understand the expectations and are truly part of evaluating their own work. They’ll also be more motivated to do well when they have this type of ownership.
We also review and emphasize proper research and giving credits to their sources. I also usually have the kids use primary sources in their films. The Library of Congress is a great place to start.
History Board Games
Did you know that the game Monopoly is based off of a game called Landlord’s Game? Not only was Landlord’s Game invented by a woman, Lizzie Magie, in the early 1900s, but it was also designed to bring attention to a social injustice regarding property and real estate. The spaces on the Monopoly board game are even based on real companies and places in the United States.
You can ask your students to create a board game inspired by whatever time period or topic you’re studying. Have them include real people, places, and events. You can even challenge them to somehow show the historical concepts and themes in their board game. I love the endless options for creativity.
History Sort
In this activity, you can give students key terms, places, people, events, and concepts from the time period you’re studying. Have them sort the words and phrases into different groups. They should be prepared to back up and explain their groupings. Challenge them to create as many different groupings as possible. They should research to see if they can discover things in common between the different terms.
You can make it into a game where they present their groupings, and their peers will have to figure out the reason behind the groupings.
History Guess Who (or what or when)
Start by giving clues about a person, or pose a question like the ones below:
Who’s most likely to____.
Who is most likely to have written this letter/ said this/committed this crime/etc.?
You can use primary sources, real events, or make them up. Have students defend their answers using historical evidence. Then give them the opportunity to come up with their own History Guess Who riddles. This can be something you do in one sitting or make it into a mini-research project. You can accommodate for different ability levels by limiting or expanding choices.
Most Important (or Influential/Villainous/etc) Person/Invention/Event of the Year
In this history project, you can ask students to research and come up with a list. They can pretend to be compiling it for a magazine or website. Have them put their list together with descriptions and explanations of their reasoning behind their rankings. Have them publish somehow – magazine format, video, digital website, podcast, etc.
Or you can task students to come up with just one person (or intention/event/etc) and debate each other.
You can put them into groups to research and debate. This would give them a lot of practice in communication and persuasion. They’ll be challenged to converge and agree on one choice within their own groups and to defend that choice to others.
Or you can have students pick individually and debate one another. You can have brackets and converge on a class winner. Students can judge the debates and cast votes for winners.
I would recommend having a panel of student judges for both scenarios. Though they don’t necessarily have to determine who wins, student judges should ask debaters clarifying questions, evaluate and give feedback on research, logic, presentation, etc.
If you want to dive into a little more speculation, you can tweak the task into something like “Which person from ___________ would be the most successful (richest/famous/etc) today?” Get creative! Have the students help you with ideas. Have fun with it!
History Commercials
You can have your student create a commercial to market a particular time period/person/tech/etc in history/time period for this history project. They can answer prompts like:
When is the best time to live?
What was the most useful/funnest invention of the 19th century?
Who should be the president of the United States in (some future year)?
What I love about this is that learners are forced to summarize the most important characteristics of whatever/whoever they’re selling and spin those characteristics into something attractive for viewers. This activity gives them opportunities to research and practice sales and psychology as well as history.
Living Museum
This is a fun biography project. Instead of writing an essay or in addition to it, students take on the persona of their assigned or chosen person. They would need to know that person so well that they will be able to answer visitor questions either by using actual facts from their research or making reasonable speculations based on the character and personality of their historical figure. Students can have props or dress ups, etc
Historical Entrepreneurs
Have your students choose or come up with a business idea that would prosper during the time period you are studying. Have them focus on a problem that a particular part of the population is dealing with. Then have them figure out what service or product their business can offer to help their customers.
This has many opportunities for greater elaboration if you want. Students can think about and plan how they would produce their product or deliver their service. They can research locations, price of buildings, business taxes and laws, etc. Remind them that they can choose different business structures – local small business, corporation, etc.
Have Students Create Their Own Research Question and Design Their Own Project:
Make sure to first give them lots of example projects and questions like the ones above. Otherwise, they might just resort to the traditional poster or essay, which is fine if that’s what they really want to do. It’s just that sometimes they choose those types of projects because they have a hard time thinking of ideas. It can be very motivating and inspiring for them to hear the types of things they can do.
Help them come up with a rubric to judge the quality of their project. Make sure to include things like: claim-evidence connection, historical accuracy, quality of sources, amount and depth of content, and workmanship/craftmanship.
Then work backwards from there to help them plan out the actions they need to take and even create a schedule to meet any deadlines.
Anyway, I hope this has been helpful! Have a beautiful and blessed day!