Make good use of available online games for social studies lessons, which can be used to engage students in learning. Online resources will normally have a set of lesson plans provided to help develop the online resource into the lesson. Lessons/activities from free resources are downloadable and generally not transferable to other media (e.g., handouts or paper) as they incorporate interactive SMART board materials for social studies.
Form groups of students and ask them to produce a presentation on a social studies topic. Provide students with resource websites, textbooks or other resources they can use to produce the presentation. Students may also benefit from a short lesson in presentation software and how to use an interactive whiteboard. Students will produce a short presentation for the class, incorporating interactive facilities on the SMART board and using various presentation slides to showcase their knowledge of the subject. Have other students ask questions at the end of each presentation.
Provide students with creative ownership over their presentation; allow them to produce the presentation using any interactive devices they like (such as games or quizzes) as long as it incorporates some knowledge of the social studies subject.
Show students an interactive map, either of the world or the United States. (Good resources to use are Google Maps or Google Earth.) Present the students with a social problem for a certain area and ask students to locate this on the map. For example, if the student is studying social issues within New York City, they would be required to locate New York on a world map and isolate different areas. Use satellite images and maps that highlight city outlines/neighborhoods to help show students where problems would be located and why. For instance, if you are studying crime in New York City, students may be asked to locate on the map the area where the crime rate would be high, such as alleyways, and discuss why the crime rate would be higher in certain sections of the city.
Generate a class discussion about any social studies project. Allow students to approach the interactive whiteboard and write their own comments on the board. Copies of the ideas can then be printed and handed to students after the lesson. Students can also be placed into groups and given a social studies topic; students will approach the interactive whiteboard and develop the concept map on the whiteboard with the rest of the class. In this way, students take on the role of teacher, thereby developing leadership skills as well.