Creativity and history

History is a very abstract field: you are required, as a historian, to rebuild what has happened in the past and at the same time you are perfectly aware of the fact that you are going to fail, that you might get close to the éventment itself but you will not recreate it. Based on this assumption, I believe that 12-14 year-olds find history difficult, as maths for example, because of this abstract feature (there are, of course, many other elements to take into account and surely history and maths do not require the same type of neurological activity). Moreover, if you take a look at history books for this stage, you will see how much they try to make history more tangible for kids.

A year ago I started introducing some activities in the classroom that required students to be creative about history. At the beginning I did it because I was tired of correcting essays and I observed that students were bored. At home, I came to the conclusion that for some learning aims I needn't make students write long pieces but I could target their creativity. Here are some of the activities that were successful in students showing what they have learned and helped me assessing their learning:


* Two newspapers that show changes and continuities in the 14th and 15th centuries. One newspaper was from the beginning of the 14th and the other of the late 15th. 


* A brochure to a Leonardo Da Vinci museum to show why he was a Renaissance man (based on Ben Walsh's Empires and Citizens).


* A speech to say before the Catholic Monarchs in order to convince them to finance an expedition to the Indies (America). 


Can you think of others?