Having Fun with Social Studies Lesson Plans

When it comes to making your social studies lesson plans fun, there are a lot of different approaches that you might take. You might choose to start with the very basic question of "what is fun?" and see what you come up with. Whether it's world history lesson plans or US history lesson plans, there is a certain amount of information that really has to get into your student's brains, whether they happen to think it's fun to learn or not. How you, as a teacher, get that information there, is an entirely different story. You have the opportunity to help your students retain their information better and enjoy doing so.

There isn't a whole lot fun about being read to for an hour, so you can throw that right out. Watching somebody write on a blackboard and copying down everything they say can't really be all that interesting, either. However, you can add multimedia elements to your lecture style that help kids stay engaged. For example, if you use a PowerPoint presentation instead of a series of overheads, you've already begun to capture their attention with better graphics and pictures and more interactive media. You can include little video clips as well, which are definitely a favorite media among many kids.

Another way to make sure that kids stay engaged is to make sure that you change things up pretty frequently. Don't get stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over again, or not breaking up your class time into different segments. If you have reading time, then group discussion, followed by active information sharing and then play a game, you'll have moved through four different styles of learning and kept the kids from getting bored and fidgety at the same time!

Speaking of learning styles- it is important that you try to incorporate different styles of teaching to correspond to the different styles of learning that your students will have. While you can't know what your class will be like when you're writing your social studies lesson plans in advance, you would do well to plan on having all learning styles represented. That means your US history lesson plans need to include activities with visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners in mind. Of course, don't forget to make the lesson plans fun for you- there's nothing more boring than a teacher who isn't interested in what they are teaching.

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