With each unit of study, I made sure to incorporate an active simulation, ranging from mock press conferences and trials to murder mysteries and dinner parties, from spy dilemmas to mock Survivor games.
When a student adopted that character's thinking and point of view in one of the simulations, passion and purpose soared.
Even the quietest, most introverted student, given the opportunity to play a personality from history, can step up and into the opportunity to speak from that person's perspective
Set up the environment so that students will be speaking and debating with each other in the roles of their historical characters and around a framing problem or issue
Bring in a variety of sources for students to analyze and research.
Social media is a wonderful connector for these kinds of simulations, with students setting up Edmodo, Schoology, or Facebook pages for their characters in a simulation, figuring out friend groups, posting photos, and speaking from their character's point of view.