Using drama while teaching history subjects in social studies lesson

Education politics show changes in time. In modern education approaches, traditional teaching methods gave their way to the system and techniques in which students are more active and can express themselves better. Drama is one of the methods which helps the students be more active in educational teaching process and makes the teaching more effective. The most important aim of the school is to improve the academic achievements of the students. Besides that, in recent years concepts such as; socialising between students, relating the informations to the daily life and organizing the teaching activities according to the individual differences, have gained importance considerably. Accordding to the modern education approach, making the learned informations permanent, relating them to daily life and using them there effectively show the efficiency of the the education. Drama technigue is seen one of the most effective ways to serve this aim by most of the researchers and they think this technique should be in every education levels. Also the ministry of national education use drama technique in guide books they publish. Drama technique has an important effect on improving the success in many topics of social studies lesson in which there are many abstract concepts. It's possible to reanimate the events in social life with drama anytime we want or need. Besides, this technique has positive effects on students abilities such as; thinking, evaluating, perception, listening and speaking. Drama also has big importance on making students like social studies lesson. Moreover, it is very important using drama to make students like and adopt social studies lesson. In the scope of the research, it was tried to determine the place, the importance and effectiveness of drama usage in the teaching of the history subjects in the Social Studies lesson. In this study, an action research was applied about using drama with historical topics in 6th grade social studies lesson. The study group of the study is composed of 6th students from School located in Torbalı district of İzmir province. From time to time, students' parents and other teachers of social studies at the school werre included to the study group.The data were provided through Pre-perception survey-final perception survey, Evaluation forms of drama work, Student's diary, Researcher's diary, Interview forms, Parent survey, Video and Voice recordings / photographs and student-made products. The lesson's implementation process, productivity and the effects on the students, were studied in this research. It has been seen that the method of drama is efficient and effective in the teaching of history subjects in social studies class and also it was seen that students and their parents showed positive attitude towards to this technique. Keywords: Social Studies Lesson, History, Drama