History, DLT, and SLT

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.