Do you speak meme? Our students certainly do!

I find myself browsing memes more often than I should. I even have a small (but growing) stash of them saved on my phone.

A meme is defined as a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.

My students LOVE creating and sharing memes. So, I started to consider how I could bring meme-making into my classroom in a meaningful, educational way.

One day, I was browsing Facebook and saw a short video, obviously made by high school students, making fun of Parliament’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party.

The video made me laugh and think about how much the teacher of those students must have inspired a love of history!

So, the history meme project was born in my classroom.

What are my rules for making history memes?

I don’t put a ton of rules or expectations on my students because I want them to be creative and feel free to use what they’ve learned about history to make the meme fun.

With that being said, I do have a couple of rules. First, their memes must be respectful, both to the person or event being portrayed and to the people who will later view the meme. Second, the language must be appropriate for 5th grade students.

** Just a note of caution, never ever allow students to make memes using sensitive subjects or issues, including slavery, Native American removal laws, and etc. **

How do we make history memes?

It’s seriously easy to make history memes.

Students need to select an image and then lay text on top of or directly under the image.

My favorite place to send students to look for history-based images is the Library of Congress. The librarians have created huge sets of primary source images by topic or time period.

Library of Congress Primary Source Sets

I encourage students to browse the primary source sets or to search for an image. Example, “Civil War families” or “dogs 19th Century.”

Once students have downloaded an image, they need to add text. For this step, I have my students use either PowerPoint or Google Slides. They just drag the image onto a blank slide and then add a text box where they want to type their text.

If you don’t know how to do this, I can almost guarantee your students know how. They’ll show you!

Once they’ve saved and submitted their images, you can either print them out for display or make a class slide show to share with all of your students.

Why do I ask my students to create history memes?

We all remember the days of reading the chapter in our social studies textbook, answering the questions, and regurgitating our knowledge on the chapter test.

The world is changing and our students are changing! Let’s all agree to not do that anymore!

I use interactive notebooks, role-play, cooperative projects, and brains-on activities in my classroom to teach social studies.

Why not add some history memes to the mix?

If you remember the Bloom’s Taxonomy chart from your days in teacher college, you know that Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating are at the top.

When students create history memes, they are doing so much more than just recalling basic factual knowledge, they are analyzing, evaluating, and creating something new!

I believe that asking students to create history memes helps to deepen their knowledge, increase their love of history, and connect history to popular culture.

How do I grade students’ history memes?

Actually, I don’t grade their history memes. If I need something to go in the grade book, I assign a participation grade.

I don’t want my students to feel boxed in on this project by trying to earn a particular grade.

A few history meme examples:

I created a History Meme Project Student Guide to use with Google Slides. Enter your first name and email address below to have the link sent to you immediately! I can’t wait to get to know you!