I would like to know how to make a history lesson fun and interesting for students.

try using puppets or linking the lesson to something familiar.

I am a certified history teacher waiting to get a job. I always feel with history the more you can get students involved in the lesson the better it will be. Try to relate the material to their lives in some way and connect them that way. It depends on what you are covering in class but you can do projects or group presentations. When i did my student teaching i let the class get in small groups and present material for a unit to the class. They came up with some creative ways i was impressed. They seemed to enjoy it and from test scores they learned the material. Just give them guide lines and make sure they cover the material in the unit.

[aussiejane]

I am about to begin a unit of study on the Australian gold rush. As a class we are going to play a game called "The Goldfields Experience". In the game, the children are given a certain amount of money to begin and must buy all their mining and living supplies. From then on, it is a game of chance where they are allocated cards at random to determine how much gold they mine and other chance events like illness. They can eventually "mine" enough to afford to buy local businesses like the blacksmith etc and earn rent money as well. They will also do extra study about the facts surrounding the gold rush, including the social and political changes of the time. Hope it will be fun and effective.

I strongly agree with what Aussiejane said. If you're studying about an expedition, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition, I suggest using "real life" situations--not just writing. It seems in every subject there is always writing, and there is being more and more of it introduced these days. All of it can tire a kid out and make him/her grow to hate writing. Also, I suggest you Googling "Making History Fun", and other such examples. I have found some great sites out there that are all about making history fun!

[JRichard]

If you're interested in making history fun, I highly recommend you check out the History Alive! materials by TCI. The program itself can be expensive, but you can find the books at Amazon used for cheap. I also have found a lot of materials posted by other teachers online.

My classes have never been more interactive since I started using History Alive! concepts. I just got through teaching my students about the Anglo colonization of Texas by having a historical simulation where they were colonists for 3 weeks. They really enjoyed it and understood the colony and the reasons for revolution much better.

Jenny