Hands-On History

During all the back to school hubbub the focus is on the kids heading back to school but it’s back to school time for teachers too. We know teachers are busy with lesson planning and trying to engage an increasingly hard to impress student body. Southport Antique Mall is dedicated to helping our educators discover a solution for teaching history to the new digital native generation. We’ve found some awesome solutions that will engage your students while teaching that history is more then just facts about the past that they can’t relate too.

The National History Education Clearinghouse (NHEC) cites using ‘material culture’ as one of the best practices for teaching history. The NHEC defines material objects as “objects that people make, collect, and use, which give insight into the beliefs and customs held by that community.” They go on to encourage teachers to remember that history is more then just words on a page. History is all around us and that’s especially true here at the Southport Antique Mall. The NHEC provides great free resources (See link below) to help you turn your history lesson from black and white words on a page into something your students can see, touch, and interact with.

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There are so many ways to integrate hands on history in your classroom. Here are just a few suggestions: Bring in a unique artifact to illustrate your lesson like a bullet that was really used in the civil war or show how complicated household chores used to be by bringing in a butter churn and a washboard. Allow your students to become the historians by examining old photos, advertisements, and magazines as primary source material to discover the past. Have student dress up like they are in the era they are giving a presentation on. This is just a few of the ways we can bring history to the classroom. What other ways can you think of? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Check out this great resource from the NHEC for even more ideas: 
http://teachinghistory.org/files/HEN/HEN-03.pdf

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