ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses impactful learning experiences that social studies teachers can utilize. It examines the utilization of drama, role playing, simulations, field trips, and service learning in the classroom. Guided fantasies are dramas in which even the shy students can participate because no acting is required, only good listening, concentration, and sensory imagination. Among the many meaningful experiences, drama can help create in social studies instruction are dramatic reading, class action dramas, mock trials, story play, sociodrama, simulations, and role play. Sociodramas involve acting out the solutions to problems. A critical benefit and dimension of readers' theater is that it focuses on the drama planning process. Structured role plays are dramatic activities in which character information and a scenario are provided to students. Some device is used so that the teacher controls the sequence of the drama. Interactional drama involves an outsider or outsiders playing out a scenario from a historical context in front of students.
