Strategies for Social Studies

Strategies 
for Social Studies:

Using hands-on activities can add interest and meaning to lessons because students are engaged in visually and kinesthetically with hands on materials. Hands-on activities make a lesson more concrete and meaningful, especially for learners who are less skilled with abstract ideas. 

According to Carolyn Halpin-Healy, hands-on activities can promote critical thinking skills as the students observe, speculate, and interpret. Using artifacts as part of a hands-on activity can add experiences with another kind of primary source to the student’s study of history.

Examples:

1. A-Z Vocabulary/ Social Studies Word Wall or Word Bank

2. Art history IS history

3. Visual discovery

4. *Flip book 

5. What am I? activity

6. Living statues

7. *Postcards (write a postcard to veterans, write recent activities, weather, and etc)

8. Paper bag history

9. *Artifact discovery

10. Sequential questioning (students ask questions to the teacher on the topic)

*The EPIC Strategy encourages critical and creative connections with history using the Constructivist theory of teaching. It works this way:

E	The teacher encourages students to share personal Experiences related to the topic. Common experiences that could be related to Columbus’ voyage, for example, might be:
	having been lost	having been bored on a long trip
	having to share space that is too small	exploring a new place
P	The teacher encourages discussion of Perceptions that students have from the experience such as feelings they had, details they remember.
I	The teacher shares Information about the topic to be studied.
C	The teacher helps the students make Connections between the students’ experiences and perceptions and the topic being studied.