#Hashtags through History -> FUN Bonus Activity

Hello, friends! I hope your semester is off to a great start! I’m coming to you today with bronchitis and no voice. This has made teaching (and talking in general) quite challenging! My daughters, ages 5 & 7, have asked me to “talk normally,” and laugh when I can’t!

I’ve been meaning to share this activity for a few months now, but life gets in the way – I know you understand!

As part of my goal to use my students’ knowledge of social media (and other pop culture topics) to my advantage to enhance the learning environment of my classroom, I created a Hashtags through History bonus activity. This activity requires students to locate an image that depicts a historic event, create a username for a person that lived through the event, describe the event as that person would in 50-100 words, and create relevant and appropriate hashtags for their post. Students then locate an article that provides additional information about the event, create a QR Code that links to that article, and paste the QR Code on their post.

Here’s a FABULOUS example created by one of my dual credit students! October 31, 2017, was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. My students know that I’m Lutheran, and wanted to make something awesome to celebrate!

I create an assignment in Google Classroom for the Hashtags through History bonus and set the due date later in the quarter/semester so students know they can work on it throughout the course of the class. Including a due date also lists the assignment in the “to-do” section for the students so they’re reminded to do this bonus!

If you’d like to try Hashtags through History with your students, click here to make a copy of the template.

As students submit these activities, I print them and display them on the wall in the back of my classroom. Hashtags through History assignments allow students to exercise technology skills (like making QR Codes), synthesize information about historical events, take on the persona of someone who lived through an event and to think about how it may have impacted their life, and have fun while doing so!

Hashtags through History projects can work outside the realm of Social Studies, as well. Think of Hashtags through Literature – requiring students to create a book report in this style, or Hashtags through STEM that may require students to create a post about an invention, scientist or mathematician, equation, etc.

How do you encourage your students to think outside the box to apply course concepts?

Thanks for reading 🙂