I mentioned in the last post about building in a longer and deeper immersion phase at the start of my Yr 12 History course. As part of that, last week, my classes came to a History Party
The activity is modelled on this Ian Dawson one, which he suggests can be used at the end of a series of lessons to consolidate learning and extend understanding of the big picture.
At the end of the provious lesson each student was given the name of one of the key characters from the AS Level course. There were 14 names in total, so some of the more significant characters were given twice. This meant they would be present even if one of the students wasn’t and we could compare and contrast what information had been found. Students were sent away to research their character and learn some of the key information.
When the lesson arrived, each student was given a sticker for the name of their character and invited to mingle. I found some period music (courtesy of You Tube) and students (who had already been taught about the concepts of Tory, Whig and Radical) were asked to find people they might have something in common with, and people who they would definitely not want to end up sat next to.
Then we played a couple of rounds of the gate game which we play in year 7 to help students to get to know each other – people have to get through the gate, but they can only do so in a pair with someone who the have something in common with in a particular category. With yr 7 it’s thing like pets an favourite food. Our historical characters had to find people who shared the same political view and then the same social class as them!
Then we sat around and each character introduced themselves, telling me who they would like to be sat with at dinner.
At the end of the lesson they were sent away to post a brief summary of themselves to Edmodo. I then collected these and turned them into an activity in Word where students needed to add the correct name to each description.
They also had to create a fakebook wall for their character, many of which are brilliant and suggest good things for the year ahead!
Easily adapted, high impact. Why don’t you have a history party tomorrow?