Role playing games allow students to explore the "what-if" questions of history. Middle school students enjoy having the opportunity to bring their lesson to life through reenactments. The role-play games may be simple impromptu skits the students create themselves, or they may be scripted presentations for their peers. Students who learn kinesthetically, or by feel, enjoy the chance to get out of their seats to perform. Shy students sometimes find that public speaking is less stressful in a role-play simulation.
Board games offer a number of ways for middle school students to review history concepts. Students may play individually, or they may play in teams. Many games are available commercially, but if the teacher has a limited budget, he can easily adapt his own version of a board game. Educational websites also provide templates and rules for make-your-own games.
Parlor-style games are also easy to adapt to middle school history classroom use. For example, a Jeopardy tournament provides an excellent review opportunity before a test. You can easily modify the basic game so any number of students may compete in small groups rather than individually. Wheel of Fortune or hangman is useful for reviewing history vocabulary and personalities. Many of these games are available in classroom versions through an educational bookstore, or the teacher can create her own version.
History puzzles are a good way for the teacher to reinforce concepts from the lesson. Word find and crossword puzzles help familiarize students with vocabulary from the lesson, as well as people, places and things. Online resources are available to create customized puzzles. All the teacher needs to do is input the words and the website does the rest. (See the discoveryeducation.com website listed in Resources.)
More computer games for middle school students are becoming available on a regular basis. Some games are for direct installation on a computer, while other games are for playing online. If the classroom has easy access to a computer lab, the teacher may provide webquests for her students; they essentially are like online scavenger hunts (see webquest.org). The students gather information on preselected web pages. The information leads the students to further research on additional pages. As they gather the information about the historical topic they are studying, they find clues that eventually lead to their successful completion of the game.