History Skits are something every History class at Arlington High School does. The fun and engaging lessons are mostly written by W Jay Schilaty, Western Civilization and Government teacher. Doing a variety of activities in the skits from wars to love stories keeps students on their toes.
Students learn different ways, from hands on, writing styles, lectures, to the style of acting it out yourself among your peers. While going through and getting your history credits the fun skits along the way can break up the repetitiveness of the class.
¨I think it engages kids with something different. And you like to see your peers be silly and do fun things, and it just breaks up the monotony. You can’t do the same thing every single time,¨ said Schilaty.
In the middle of every unit comes a new skit, the roles will be given out by the teacher or volunteered by classmates. A class ¨performance¨ or effort into the skit is solely depended on who is in the class.
¨They make you able to see visually what happened and comprehend it better when you’re saying it out loud,¨ said Aaliyah Biddle (28) who is in World History with Teacher Jeff Bryson.
Schality has been teaching for nearly twenty years, and his skits have been evolving with him. Trying to make the skit fun and entertaining while maintaining historical accuracy was a skill he learned over time.
¨So I would say at least 90% of the skit is historically accurate and then you throw in some things to make it more fun where you can. But sometimes,history’s so crazy, just having them do it is crazy enough,¨ said Schilaty.
Students typically look forward to the up and coming skit for the unit, and the class’s responses are typically just as fun and the skit itself. Using skits is a way that history teachers have made the class more fun for the students but also themselves.
¨It’s a fun activity that we all look forward to because sometimes we do situations and we learn about stuff, and this is just different from what we do. For the people watching, we try to act great so they can have fun with it and we all engage together,¨ said Emmanuel Gonzalez-Toribio (28) who is in Western Civilization.
