Instagram & Housing Styles

                                           


Housing styles. Not always the most interesting topic for teenagers, right? Well we all know what happens when you you find a way to involve social media in your lesson plans. Students love it! You're really speaking their language this way. So I thought housing styles was a great lesson to include Instagram!

Each student chose a different type of housing style. I had a decently small class so I allowed them each to chose the style that interested them the most on a first come, first serve basis. You could assign them the housing style or even allow them to pick a style from a hat. For this assignment each student had find an evolved version of the housing style they chose. For example, Greek Revival became popular between 1825 and 1860. It was reinvented and inspired the Neoclassical Housing style that was popular in America between 1895 and 1950.

I gave my students one period to research their housing styles and find their new and inspired housing style, which we refereed to as old for simplicity purposes. They also had the opportunity to print photos of each housing style to use for their "Instagram post". I printed off copies of an Instagram screenshot and gave one to each of my students. Students used their Instagram post as a #tbt. (Throwback Thursday for those of you who aren't familiar with hash tagging.) They also got to create their own hashtag's for their project which they seemed to really enjoy that creative expression.

Each picture was listed in collage style with interesting facts about it underneath. Pictures were placed next to each other for comparison purposes.

I had zero wall space to post these beauties on so I turned my classroom door into an Instagram board. My principal observed this lesson and really enjoyed watching my students put these together.

I hope this can inspire you to use "social media" in your classroom even when you're unable to use the real thing.