Letter to the Editor
West Virginia teachers should teach WV history by doing interactive activities. This way of teaching enables students to learn history and other subjects by memorizing and doing “hands on” activities. This way also makes learning more fun for the kids and the teachers. It helps kids focus more. It also helps the kids bond with family and friends.
Here is a quote from Kurt Lewin: “Learning is more effective when active rather than a passive process.”
Some examples of interactive learning history are students can make up their own character and the family line and can act out what happens in the history. Students can do a reenactment or a short play with the students chosen characters. You can have the students write and act out their play to the class or their family. Students could make up and do a skit on what happened to their family/persona during that time in history. Like my class did a skit on the Civil War. In my opinion, this way of teaching makes students want to learn more and it makes a good trimester/semester project.
Another way of interactive learning is through going on field trips. My class went to Matewan, WV. It is really fun to go on field trips because the students are able to talk to people that are the ancestors of the person that they are learning about. When the students do these activities, they can partner up and do activities together. When my class went to Matewan, the people there did a reenactment and they included my class.
When students are writing their personas they should get their family involved with their persona maybe have the parent make one of their own. Then the student can tell the parents what happened. They can send pictures in to the teacher. The students will have a lot of fun.
In conclusion, interactive learning has many benefits and the students find it easier to learn (in my experience). Sometimes trip costs are expensive. In order to offset costs, our students and teachers often do fundraisers, ask for grants and ask the school to help fund it.
