Make a Connection to Today

• Provide students with a present-day connection, giving them something they can relate to. Encourage students to make history come alive. For example, if you're studying the Holocaust, touch on the concentration camps in North Korea and the genocide in Darfur. If you're studying the founding of America, compare and contrast it with the democracy established in Russia or Iraq. There may lessons where making a present-day connection is impossible. Don't force a connection and risk confusing or losing the focus of the lesson. Rely on another technique to effectively teach the lesson. Discuss history as it happens every day in the world.
  
  

Use Music, Film and Technology

• Grab the students' attention with music, film and technology. Reading from a book day after day is boring. Use music to introduce a lesson or provide examples. Play students examples of slave songs, coded with messages about escaping, or jazz from the Harlem Renaissance. Use films to emphasize a lesson, not replace it. Choose critical points to show in class, highlighting your study. Discuss the film clips with students and tell them what to look for before beginning. Use technology when possible. Computers and the Internet can take students around the world to experience historical sites such as the Nazi concentration camps or the Egyptian pyramids.
  
  

Make Lessons Interactive

• Design history lessons for students to be involved. Ask students to do more than just read and take notes, but to create foldables to use as study guides for important battles, dates or historical figures. Making these three-dimensional study guides requires students to search for and write key information, so they get to review the lesson as they create. Other ideas include creating "billboard advertisements" for the 13 colonies, holding a debate between patriots and loyalists, and hosting a period day. On period days, students dress and participate in activities from the time period. Period days take planning and extra help but can be an effective learning tool. Adjust these activities to meet your needs.