Yesterday I read Created Equal to a group of kids in an after-school program. At first they were less than thrilled that I wasn’t going to be reading a storybook. Almost all the kids I read to in after-school programs prefer fiction over nonfiction. And history? That’s something they have to study in school, but this was after school was over for the day. They wanted something fun.Well, it’s not always easy to make history fun, but it is possible to make it more interesting.
So how do you make history more interesting for kids? For one thing, see if you can relate it to something in their lives. For another, see if you can relate it to something they really care about.
One little girl in the front row yesterday was all enthused about Martin Luther King. He doesn’t happen to be mentioned in Created Equal, but the book does deal with much of what he was fighting for.
The book is not just about equality for African Americans but also about equality for women, for Native Americans, and for other groups. The book’s theme is that even though America was founded on the principle set forth in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal,” we haven’t always practiced what we preached.
When this little girl in the front row could relate what I was reading to Martin Luther King, who obviously is one of her heroes, the book suddenly came alive for her.
When I got to the part about equal rights for women, I caught the attention of most of the girls in the group. Now it wasn’t just a dull school subject. Now it was about them.
If you can relate a book or a part of a book on a “dumb old school subject” to the child himself/herself, or to something that really interests him or her, you have a much better chance of getting his/her attention. Suddenly the child doesn’t feel like he/she is being given extra homework instead of being given fun reading. Now he/she is actually engaged in the subject.
And yet, he/she is learning something—something that will work to his/her advantage in school and possibly boost his/her marks.
Stealth learning!