To me, history is a subject that can either be made very engaging for students, or it can be boring and confusing if Developmental Learning Theory and Social Learning Theory aren't considered. I've sat through history classes that were lecture from beginning to end, and every day I walked to that class knowing that I was going to sit in my seat and rapidly scribble down dates and names for fifty minutes. I've also been in a history class, AP European History, where I looked forward to that class all morning long and remembered almost all of the people, places, and events we talked about. In terms of a high school history class, the student's age limits allow them to potentially develop a complex and abstract understanding of the subject matter. That understanding however, needs to first be supported by concrete examples.
For example, in teaching the French Revolution, instead of lecturing for days on end and then showing an educational movie as some type of reward, as most of my history teachers have done, I would show the film first. By doing this, students will have visual imagery to reflect on when I'm teaching about the Revolution. Educational videos however, can lose the interest of many students, so showing a film that is related, such as the relatively recent Hollywood hit "Marie Antoinette", and not just a video lecture will engage students much better. The idea here is that they will be able to recall what Paris looked like during the Revolution, and how people dressed and talked while they are being presented with more abstract representations. Before the showing the film, you could do an in-class role playing activity that resembles the social dynamics of the French Revolution but doesn't explicitly talk about the event. The students will experience first-hand something like the Revolution, then see a video representation of it, and then learn the details.
I agree that it's important to start off concrete, but I feel as if you abruptly ended your blog. You mention SLT, but you never talk about incorporating that into a history lesson. How could you do so?
ReplyDeleteI think you had a good start to being concrete and using DLT to teach about history. Like you said, history is usually either entirely lecture or very engaging and interesting. In my class, when we were learning about various wars in U.S. History, we would act out the wars to begin the unit. This was always really engaging and got all of us to be more interested in the topic. I also agree that showing a move that isn't a video lecture can be of much more interest to students. I was wondering how you'd incorporate SLT into history as well.
ReplyDeleteI really agree and think your idea for using DLT is awesome for history. Because I as well was one of those people who would always be writing down all of the dates and important facts about the history topic, so I feel as though you do a great job saying how you could start to use DLT in your class. But you never really finish up how you could use it throughout the whole lesson of learning about the french revolution. Not saying you needed a lesson plan, but maybe some more examples of how you could use DLT and SLT since I don't think you covered it at all besides maybe the role playing but SLT.
ReplyDeleteJoe, I agree with you that history is a class that needs to be taught in an interesting way or else it can become tedious and boring. I know you lay several ideas out there but there is one that I don't necessarily agree with. That is the video. I do think that videos are a good way to engage students. However, I think that it is better to have students read about the topic, maybe have an open discussion in class about it, and then watch the video. I know that this goes against developmental learning theory but I believe that videos can sometimes instill the wrong thought in people especially since they tend to go a little off base of the real event in order to make it entertaining. I think it is best for the children to get the correct facts first, imagine it in their mind, and then see the video and compare it to what they already know.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that history is a class that needs to be made interesting for the students-- otherwise they will completely lose interest. Many times students fail to see the importance of history in the first place. I remember many fellow students who would always say "Why do we need to know this? It already happened so why does it matter?" Because many students don't see the value in history it has to be taught in an interesting manner. I completely agree with your idea to show the video first-- though it goes against everything I was taught in school until college I agree that there's merit in having students have visuals in their head so the concept is easier to understand. And I really don't like how movies are used as rewards-- shouldn't they just be used as an effective way to teach?
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using media to aid in the teaching of history. In my high school French class we did something similar in learning about the French Revolution. We watched the film Les Miserables and throughout the section we played a classroom game that involved French history trivia and if you got a question wrong the blade of the guillotine got closer to the bottom that would behead your photo on the board. I learned more in the six weeks we studied history in my French class than I ever did in my history of Europe class.
ReplyDeleteYou have some great ideas. I think it's very important when learning history to have some context of the time that you're learning about. If you're going to show a hollywood movie, make sure that it's at least somewhat historically accurate. It's hard to think of how Social Learning Theory can fit into teaching the French Revolution. Perhaps you could ask them to discuss what they know about the French Revolution before teaching them.
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