How to teach history at school
Video: A Better Way to Teach History | Seth Berkowitz | TEDxArcadiaUniversity 2024, July
At all times, the teacher was not just a carrier of knowledge, but a person who was able to influence the fate of entire generations. From how well the teacher knows his subject, understands it and loves, it often depends on how much he will be students. If in the near future you want to devote a professional career to teaching such an important subject as history, consider a few things.
Instruction manual
one
Be prepared to answer any question. The student’s attitude to the subject is 50% dependent on his attitude to the teacher. In order to get students to be located, show yourself as an expert in the field you teach. If you do not know the exact answer, do not give up the question and do not build theories about the likely development of events. Just write down the question and say that be sure to give an answer later. The students will be pleased with your attitude to this situation, and they will answer you the same. But do not forget to provide an answer soon.
2
Try to turn learning into a game. Children love to play, there is no secret. Why not conduct a test quiz on the eve of the test. The student who scored the most points in this exciting event can be exempted from the control, and the guys will be much more pleasant to prepare for such an event than to an official knowledge test.
3
Come up with some small theatrical games. Such things are always perfectly stored in the memory of the child. It is quite possible that within a week the control on the topic of the polemic between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks will completely fly out of my head. But it is unlikely that the students will forget the game in ten years, where the boys defended the nobleman Novikov and his magazine, and the girls defended the side of Catherine the Great.
4
Do not conduct test polls. The test is not suitable for testing the real knowledge of students. In addition to the fact that you can simply guess the correct answers, very often superfluous options knock down students and force them to make the wrong decisions, especially if the material is superficially learned. It is better to conduct small blitz polls in writing, where you ask a question, and the student must give an answer in the form of a name, title or date.
5
Try to tell stories in student language. After the university bench, getting used to the dry lectures of teachers, it is difficult to switch to lively and colorful stories about the battles of Peter the Great, but this is exactly what needs to be done. If we are talking about secondary and junior school, it makes no sense to retell the historical background of a particular period. Imagine that you are telling a friend a movie you recently liked. It is in this genre that it is advisable to narrate for a young student.