Non Linguistic/Kinesthetic Activity

I have found that using non linguistic and kinesthetic activities in classroom instruction helps to make history come alive for my students. When I taught my students about slave life on plantation. I gave each student a cotton bole. They had to remove the seeds from the cotton. I showed them pictures of slaves filling boots, barrels,and baskets with the cotton. They could imagine what life would have been like having to pick enough cotton and remove enough seeds to fill the baskets each day. As they worked on their cotton, I read some excerpts to them from the book, To Be a Slave, where it described cotton picking. I also had them listen to some spirituals. Because it was a hands-on activity, students realized a little better what the life of a slave was like and remember it better than if they had simply read it from a book and done a worksheet.