Learning Objectives

Sample activities to pair with your learning objectives.

Overview

How do you effectively integrate new kinds of digital history tools, like Running Reality, into your already crowded classroom schedule? Teachers have learning objectives and new tools and techniques must help meet those objectives to be useful in the classroom. We have provided a list of sample activities paired with standardized skills and learning questions to show how to meet common learning objectives for middle and high school history students around the world.

Lesson plan classroom use

Free-form classroom use

Sample Activities

These sample activities map to the skills and learning questions required of teachers.

Skill	Learning Questions	Sample Activity
Identify and describe a historical context for a specific historical development or process.	What was happening in a specific location? How did people feel in an around the event, such as a battle? What were their lives like? What was happening in another part of the world at this time? What mattered to them at this same time?	List three battles happening in a different country or on another continent on the same date.
Identify a historical concept, development, or process.	What is a national border? How do we know territory was with a border? What does it mean for a person today to draw a single line for the border of an ancient people? How did people explore? How did they trade? How can a map show this?	List geographic reasons why a city became prosperous and influential. List reasons for its decline.
Identify patterns among or connections between historical developments and processes.	How do geographic factors like rivers, harbors, silting, proximity to resources, and proximity to economic centers affect a city? How did features like mountains, valleys, and rivers affect connectivity between regions? How did they affect road/railroad building and national borders?	List five ancient roads on different continents that followed a mountain pass.
Support an argument using specific and relevant evidence.	How is a map evidence? How does a map help make specific points in a written report?	Capture map snapshots to use in a report.
Explain the relative historical significance of a source’s credibility and limitations.	What can a map tell you about an event? Can it convey context? Can it convey motivation? How is an original paper map different than a modern digital map? Do map makers have a point of view? Can maps be biased? Do maps contain all information? What can be included? What can not?	Find a map error. Identify the data that would be needed to make a correction and what sources to use.
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, text and visual, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.	Is the map consistent with other reading you have done? What does each tell you? Do maps give a visual narrative? What are the strengths of text versus visual history? Which maps can be a primary source? How do you use and cite a primary source versus a secondary source?	Compare a map snapshot with a historical map of the same event and with the narrative from a textbook.
Adapted from U.S. College Board and Common Core standards.

We hope you find that Running Reality is a good fit for your classroom and that these techniques will help you integrate it easily. We understand that you need to ensure both that any tools you use fit into the overall learning structure provided by you or your school or university, and that they are fun and easy and clear for your students to use. We hope you will share any tips or techniques that you develop.

Practical advice at FreeTech4Teachers

Resources at the American Historical Association

Examples for teaching with Minecraft