Rocking History: How Sabaton’s Songs Can Transform Your Classroom

Hello amazing teachers!

Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to bring history to life for your students? Meet Sabaton, a Swedish heavy metal band known for their powerful songs about historical events. While heavy metal might not be the first thing that comes to mind for a primary school setting, Sabaton’s music is a treasure trove of educational content that can make learning history exciting and memorable for your students.

Let’s explore how you can use Sabaton’s songs to enhance your history lessons.

Who are Sabaton?

Sabaton is a band that combines heavy metal music with historical storytelling. Their songs cover a wide range of historical events, from ancient battles to modern warfare. With their captivating melodies and dramatic lyrics, Sabaton makes history come alive in a way that’s both educational and entertaining.

Why Use Sabaton in Your Classroom?

  1. Engaging Content: Sabaton’s energetic music can capture students’ attention and make historical events more interesting.
  2. Storytelling: Each song tells a story, helping students to understand and remember historical events and figures.
  3. Discussion Starters: The lyrics can serve as a springboard for discussions about the historical context, causes, and consequences of events.

How to Use Sabaton in Your History Lessons

  1. Song Selection: Choose songs that are age-appropriate and relevant to your curriculum. Some good options include:
    • “Bismarck”: The story of the famous German battleship during World War II.
    • “Christmas Truce”: About the remarkable events and friendships between allied forces and German troops around the trenches during the Christmas truce in WW I.
    • “Aces in Exile”: Highlighting the bravery of foreign pilots in the Battle of Britain.
    • “Carolus Rex”: The story of a Swedish king gone quite crazy.
    • There are others from Africa, Greek history, and much more.
  2. Introduce the Historical Context: Before playing the song, give your students a brief overview of the historical event or figure. This will help them understand the lyrics better.
  3. Listen and Analyse: Play the song for your class and provide the lyrics for them to follow along. After listening, discuss the key points mentioned in the song. Ask questions like:
    • What event or person is the song about?
    • What emotions or themes are present in the lyrics?
    • How does the music reflect the historical event?
  4. Creative Projects: Encourage your students to engage with the content creatively:
    • Drawing: Have them draw scenes inspired by the song’s story.
    • Writing: Ask them to write a short essay or a diary entry from the perspective of a historical figure mentioned in the song.
    • Role-Playing: Organise a role-playing activity where students act out parts of the historical event.
  5. Compare and Contrast: Use Sabaton’s songs alongside traditional history lessons, such as OpenSTEM’s HASS materials. Compare the song’s portrayal of events with historical texts and discuss any differences or artistic liberties taken by the band.

Tips for Success

  • Preview the Songs: Ensure the content is suitable for your students’ age group and comprehension level.
  • Create a Safe Space: Some historical events may be sensitive. Encourage respectful discussions and be prepared to address any tough questions that arise.
  • Encourage Curiosity: Let students ask questions and explore topics that interest them further. Use the songs as a gateway to deeper learning.

Using Sabaton’s music in your history lessons can bring a fresh and dynamic approach to teaching. Your students will not only learn about historical events but also develop a greater appreciation for the power of storytelling through music.

So, crank up the volume and let Sabaton help you rock your history lessons!

Resources

Let’s make history unforgettable for our students!

(this post was created using some information from ChatGPT in addition to our own research)

Covering the federal election, before the election

Since PM Scott Morrison did not announce the federal election date last week, it will now be held somewhere between March and May (see the post from ABC’s Antony Green for details). Various aspects of elections are covered in the Civics & Citizenship Australian Curriculum in Years 4, 5 and 6. Students are interested in topical issues in society and their local community. After all, it’s adults making decisions now about issues that will affect them, and it students feel quite strongly that they should have a say. Guiding that process from within a classroom can be a good thing.

And regardless of what opinions we hold on particular topics, learning how the voting system works, with assistance from free additional resources by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission), is useful and one might say essential for everyone in our society. With our Election Activity Bundle, you as a teacher (or home tutor) have everything you need to guide this learning process.

Most of the materials can be used in a remote classroom, with the appropriate PDFs and other resources made available to the students – so they are definitely usable in a COVID scenario.

While the “Show of Hands” Activity of course works fine, doing the secret ballot from the “Running a Class Election” Activity is not practical in a remote setting, and that in itself is something that can be discussed with the students, compensating for missing out on actually doing it… what are the issues there?

The activities are of course specifically aimed at the above-mentioned year levels. However, the base resources are suitable for high school students and adults as well!  Everything you wanted to know about preferences, for instance.

So, while planning the latter part of your first school term this year, grab our Election Activity Bundle today, for only $9.

Online Teaching

It can be fun!

The OpenSTEM® materials are ideally suited to online teaching. In these times of new challenges and requirements, there are a lot of technological possibilities. Schools and teachers are increasingly being asked to deliver material online to students. Our materials can assist with that process, especially for Humanities and Science subjects from Prep/Kindy/Foundation to Year 6. We also have some resources for a few high school subjects.

Fully aligned to the Australian curriculum, we have hundreds of resource PDFs. Teachers have used these for literacy practise in English, as well as resources for the Humanities and Science curriculum. They have even been used for NAPLAN preparation!

Full units available

We also have full lesson kits – divided into four units per year level (one for each term). These comprise a teacher’s handbook with complete lesson plans for each lesson; a student’s workbook which takes each student through all the requirements of each lesson, complete with assessment; a curriculum plan which indicates which curriculum items are being addressed in the unit and a complete assessment guide with criteria sheet, to match curriculum strands. Our use of continuous assessment, provides both formative and summative assessment points and means that there is no need to arrange proctoring of an exam in order to gain a full assessment. The assessment guide can be used to populate the report, if needed, each term.

Learning at home

The units make use of the PDF resources. These can be distributed with the student workbooks, to each student, via email. The entire unit can be undertaken without the need for a virtual classroom if required, with the support of a parent or home tutor, and phone calls to the teacher as required. Students could email back a scan of the completed student workbook, and any additional material they have written. The teacher could also deliver video presentations, which students could download, and students could upload videos or audio recordings of themselves delivering their material.

The units can also be used within a virtual classroom setting, or via a video conference link, with the teacher discussing the unit and requirements with students and then sending them off to work through their workbooks. Students could present finished bodies of work online in later session. The OpenSTEM® units could be undertaken with just one such online session a week, again assuming some input from a parent or person at home with the child, given that we are talking primary school children.

Some of our more extensive units (such as our Ginger Beer unit) address more than just Humanities and Science, covering Maths, Business and Economics and English curriculum items as well. These would need the active participation of a parent to assist the child at home and we would recommend arranging a call with us to deliver the initial stages of the project.

Virtual Classrooms vs Video Conferencing

So what is a virtual classroom and how does it differ from video conferencing?

Engagement

We are all familiar with video conferencing programs such as Skype. These are growing more sophisticated and now include the capacity for screen sharing, type chat boxes and other tools to make having an online meeting or conversation easier.

Virtual classrooms (like BigBlueButton) are different because they have tools specifically for replicating classroom activities. As well as video and text chat, one can show a presentation, image or other document in the centre of the screen. The teacher or students (subject to permissions decided by the teacher), can write on pages of the presentation. So teachers can annotate slides, students can answer questions etc. Students can also be assigned into groups (anything from one to any size) and placed into “break-out” rooms, where they get their own copy of the presentation/document. Thus students can answer questions either individually or in groups, or discuss a topic, just as they would in class. The teacher can move between the groups to monitor activity. Break out rooms can be ended by the teacher after a set time, or at any time.

Timers can be used in the main room, e.g. to give students 10 minutes to write notes/answers. Or to allow the break out rooms to exist for only a certain length of time. Students are then returned to the main room to share what they discussed. Students can also chat in a side bar, to answer questions, or use an icon to “raise a hand” if they wish to ask something. Students can either type to reply or the teacher can allow them to contribute verbally by activating their microphone permissions.

Teachers have a lot of control in a virtual classroom. Trouble makers can have their permissions revoked and be silenced immediately. They can also be segregated to a room on their own, but still see the lesson material. Without an audience to play to, most behaviour settles quickly.

Email us for assistance if you want to know more about virtual classrooms.

You’re Not Alone!

Remember, there are a lot of people out there who have walked these paths below. We can assist you with resources, units, assessment, advice on virtual classrooms and many other aspects of online learning, including what works and what doesn’t. There are many other online communities that can also assist. Do reach out and let’s support each other through these trying times.

Election Activity Bundle

With the upcoming federal election, many teachers want to do some related activities in class – and we have the materials ready for you!

To make selecting suitable resources a bit easier, we have an Election Activity Bundle containing everything you need, available for just $9.90.

Did you know that the secret ballot is an Australian invention? Well Tasmanian actually.

Children are interested in topical issues in society and their local community. After all, it’s adults making decisions now about issues that will affect our children. And regardless of what opinions we hold on particular topics, learning how the voting system works, with assistance from free additional resources by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission), is useful. With our Election Activity Bundle, you have everything you need to guide the learning process.

As these topics are covered in the Civics & Citizenship Australian Curriculum in Years 4, 5 and 6 the activities are of course specifically aimed at those year levels. However, the base resources are suitable for high school students and adults as well!  Everything you wanted to know about preferences, for instance.

School-wide Understanding Our World® implementations

Understanding Our World - integrated History/Geography HASS+Science programAre you considering implementing our integrated HASS+Science program, but getting a tad confused by the pricing?  Our subscription model didn’t not provide a So nowstraightforward calculation for a whole school or year-level.  However, it generally works out to $4.40 (inc.GST) per student.  So now we’re providing this as an option directly: implement our integrated HASS+Science program school-wide from just $4.40 per student.  Easy!

Just like with the subscriptions, we do price on the basis of at least 100 students, which means that very small schools see an effective higher cost per student compared to the above stated.  However, we’ve done a few projections and because of composite classes and the like this approach often still works out cheaper than the old subscription system.  Plus, our materials provide for multi-year integration which are a lot of work to achieve.  So you get proper solutions for your education needs, and at an unbeatable price.

Try our calculator with the numbers for your school!