Five Innovative Strategies
to Ignite your Social Studies Classroom!
Dr. Jeremiah Clabough
March 23, 2016
Social Studies Instruction in the 21st Century
 The demands of the Common Core State Standards, the C3
Framework by the National Council for the Social Studies, and
AMLE’s This We Believe have changed the nature of what middle
school social studies teachers should be doing in their classrooms.
 All of these documents place an emphasis on student-centered
instruction, activities, and assessments that promote students’
higher order thinking skills.
 The goal of this webinar is to explore some possible activities for
meeting this objective.
Strategy #1:
Using Storyboards to Explore Different Perspectives
 How people perceive historical
figures and events depends greatly
on their social, cultural, political,
regional, and religious beliefs and
values.
 Storyboards are one activity that
allow students to explore these
differences of perspectives.
 Students can examine trial
evidence from Famous Trials,
http://www.umkc.edu/famoustrials/.
Example Storyboard
Example Storyboard
Story Board Question Time!
What are some of the benefits
of this storyboard activity?
Strategy #2:
Web 2.0 Tools in Social Studies
 Web 2.0 tools like Facebook, blogs, Storybird,
& historical memes allow students to
create their own representations of knowledge.
 Students can go to http://imgur.com/, where
they can create memes online for free.
This site is very user friendly, and students
can either use existing pictures on the site or upload their own.
 The meme requires an image from the assigned historical era.
Students should create a caption that conveys a specific point of
view about a topic. They also should create a brief “director’s
cut” to explain their historical meme.
Example of a Historical Meme about McCarthyism
Meme Question Time!
How do students benefit from
writing the “director’s cut”?
Strategy #3:
Role Playing through a Historical Press Conference
 Professional athletes, coaches, and
politicians give press conferences
all of the time.
 Students assume the role of a historical
figure and do research about an issue.
They can then do a press conference in
their chosen role.
 Students may assume the role of a
historical figure to boast about his or her
accomplishments or bemoan certain failures.
Example Press Conference
Andrew Jackson’s Press Conference after the losing to John Quincy Adams
I want to start off by addressin’ my loyal supporters. We were cheated out of victory
by some snakes that are anythin’ but gentlemen. The support that I received by the people
warms my heart. I tried to represent you and your wishes to the best of my ability.
The rest of my message goes to you President Adams. You better enjoy
your one term as President because I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I will be back in the presidential
election of 1828 to right this injustice. My supporters and I will not let this injustice in a
democratic country go unavenged. You and your corrupt friends will be givin the boot out of
office in four years. Thank you for the time and God bless America.
Role-Playing Question Time!
How do students benefit from
creating and acting out a
historical press conference?
Strategy #4:
Decision Making in the Social Studies
 Middle school students make decisions
every day that can have lasting repercussions.
 One of the goals for our middle school
social studies classroom should be to
provide students opportunities to make
meaningful historical decisions with the use
of evidence.
 One activity that can be used to do this is a
historical bracket, which borrows the idea of
the bracket from college basketball.
Example Bracket
Bracket Question Time!
How do students benefit
from completing
the bracket activity?
Strategy #5:
Creating a Laboratory of Democracy
 The 2016 presidential election cycle has proven
that we all need to improve the quality of
discussion, activities, and assessments that we
use in our classrooms about civic education topics.
 Middle School social studies teachers must work
to create a “laboratory for democracy” where
students work with democratic principles, ideas,
and experiments on a daily basis.
 One way this can be accomplished is by
analyzing controversial historical monuments.
Example Graphic Organizer with
Controversial Monument
Monumental Monument Question Time!
How do students benefit from
this controversial historical
monument activity?
Questions and Comments?
Dr. Jeremiah Clabough
[email protected]