Activities for Social Studies

 A very simple activity to simply find out prior viewpoints or values is to present students with a statement or set of statements and then get them to decide whether they agree or disagree with them or to select which statement they agree with the most for example if you're looking at rules and laws you can present them with these three statements and ask which one do they most agree with about rules and laws and to explain why so for example is it wrong to HIPAA break any rule of law is it okay to break rules and laws in some cases or many rules and laws are silly and deserve to be broken another very easy activity to set up is treasure hunt now with treasure hunt you come up with 10 or 15 questions related to the topic or issue you're going to study you give those questions to students on sheet and they are able to walk around the class and ask other students each of the questions to see whether they can find the answers to them all now the rule is that any student they ask can only give them one answer to a question so at the bend of your time you set the students down and you go through the questions and find out how many of them they were able to accurately answer or find the answers to any that they don't know the answers to obviously areas that are worth devoting more time to in the study so it's a very helpful diagnostic assessment method another very easy activity is brainstorming this is most effective when you do it with a data projector and project the results up onto the screen as you record them use a software program like bubble us which is free available online and simply pose the question of ask them what they knownabout this topic and brainstorm it out the way that you can see in the example here different colors help you to establish different categories relate to the central theme in this case holidays k WL stands for know want to know and learn at the very beginning of a study put a big chart up on the wall divided into three and have as the first heading what we know about this issue or topic whatever you're studying get the students to identify the most important things they already know and list those onto the chart the second thing is get the students to identify things that be interested in finding out would like to know about that topical issue once the study is finished go back to the chart and get the students to identify what were the most important things or the most interesting things they learned about this topical issue and record those a KWL chart is a very useful way of looking at learning and identifying what learning has taken place during the study think-pair-share is a good way of getting students to think about an issue or a problem that is going to be the central theme or focus of a study in the first step you present students with a problem or a question or a statement and get them to think about their response to that now they have to think for two minutes without speaking to anyone else so it's got to be done in silence at the end of the two minutes they can then turn to a partner and discuss their particular viewpoint or stance on that issue or problem or statement when they've had a chance to talk to their partner you then bring them back together as a class and each pair of students presents what they agree or what they think is the answer to that particular problem or where they stand in terms of that issue the purpose of this activity is to raise curiosity in students about a topic or study that they're going to undertake now what I've got here is an old iron from 1900 it worked by putting hot coals inside of it and then using the iron to iron your clothes now if you're using the something like this you don't tell the students what it is you simply show them a picture or showing the actual thing and ask them a set of questions so they can begin to work out for themselves something about it the kind of questions you would ask would be what are your first impressions of this object what appears to be the main purpose of this object what knowledge and skills would be required to make it would it have been easy or difficult to use what does it tell us about the people who owned it and there are a lot of questions that could be asked which could have raised a lot of information about this particular object just by looking at it situation cards give students a glimpse of the sorts of things they'll be covering during a study so you give these situation cards to small groups of maybe three or four or five students get them to go away and discuss them and then report back to the class so for example if you were doing a study on refugees you could give them this situation card you and your parents have escaped from Syria and have safely crossed the Mediterranean you're living in a Turkish refugee camp the camp is overcrowded people are unsure of how long they can remain there you have heard that Germany is offering asylum to people from Syria it is a rich country with many opportunities the journey would be dangerous many people are drowned on the boat trip to Greece if you reach Greece safely the next part of the journey is a 1600 kilometer walk to the German border would you stay in the safety of the refugee camp or try to reach Germany and why explain your decision words and thoughts is a great way of getting kids to think about what does it like to be in a particular situation now what I've got here is a photograph of boy miners back in 1912 they were coal miners they've obviously just come off a shift and if we were going to look at some of the hardships that people faced 100 years ago then this would be a good photograph to start off because the students can identify with the people in the photograph big children so what you ask them to do is to think about if you're in a similar situation if you may be one of those boys and you just come off a long shift working underground what might you be thinking what might you actually say to the photographer now the students can write their answers onto a piece of paper and you can put those up on the wall or if you want to blow up the photograph you can make a display using the student suggestions and so on but a really interesting way to look at photograph short stories or even a passages from novels can be very effective for getting students interested in a topic or a study they're about to undertake now if in this case if I was looking at the life and times of Anne Frank as the focus for my study I might read out this passage to students first of all prior to reading it out tell them that it was written during World War two give them a bit of background and Frank she was about 12 years of age when she wrote this passage and get them to think about what would be like to be living in these times and these circumstances have you ever heard the term hostages that's the latest punishment for saboteurs it's the most horrible thing you can imagine leading citizens innocent people are taken prisoner to awake their execution if the Gestapo can't find the saboteur they simply grab five hostages and line them up against the wall you read the announcements of their death and the paper where they referred to as fatal accidents and the lastly activity instance the use of video now students are very accustomed to watching videos and there are an enormous number of very good short videos available on the web whether you go to youtube or other specialist sites now in this example here what I want to do is to look at how people overcome the odds to achieve what they want to achieve and what I would use to start off a study like that is a little blog called the red paper clip now this is a true story about a young man called Kyle who wanted to own a house that puts way beyond his means and so what he did was start off with a red paperclip and began to trade that red paperclip until he eventually reached his goal of earning a house two marvelous story and very effective in terms of inspiring students about the possibilities if you are persistent input your mind things