Role Playing

The act of playing out a character can help teach students understand the past. Allowing students to try out and step into the role of a past child of the era their studying. This could be taking part in education programs at museums and even in the classroom. For example, at Black Creek Pioneer Village, there are programs for Grade 7 students that has students tour through out the village taking on a certain perspective. They then end their tour arguing the side/perspective to see which side is the strongest. Or even the Dickson Hill program we have at Black Creek, where grade 3 student spend the week at the village. Each morning starting their day with their teacher teaching them in the historic Dickson Hill School house and completing their day doing 3 apprenticeships each day, in buildings such as the doctors house, printshop, weavers shop, broom makers shop, first and second Stong house, and more. Or even just having the chance to go to a historic school house for the day, many school boards own their own or local museums offer this.

If you are unable to go on a field trip, then bring it to the classroom. This could be done, by having students dress up like students from the past for a day, and give them a identity card of a child that lived during the period being studied, so that they have someone to link onto. Or even create stations for students to go through that has them try out historic activities. Such as making a historic recipe or craft, playing games that were popular in the past, or anything that gets the students to understand children of the past that they can compare to their own lives. With older students, have them re-enact historic events, such as political events, or important events that impacted upon the present. This could be allowing students to try out new ideas and think about the reasons to why certain political powers won, or new laws come about, or even our ideologies.