For high school students, one activity for them is to role play some historical figures or characters in traditional stories. In a school I taught students performed "Mulan" in Chinese. It was fascinating to see American students perform the story in Chinese language.
That is a great idea. Anything that will physically have children doing something and out of their desks works well. Another thing to add on to this would be to have them role play what happens next in a story or to do the same as a prequel even. Just a thought.
My 5 year old niece speaks Mandarin as like she was born in China! She's African American and it's so wonderful hearing her speak Chinese with her teacher... so this story about role playing is really close to my heart!
I find students are highly engaged when they have an opportunity to role play. In addition, students who are 'forced' to think and behave as an individual who they do not necessarily agree with allows for a chance to truly see both sides of an argument. I have done some role playing with short stories in which characters were assigned individuals to be in a court trial, and students who definitely did not agree with some of the protagonists who had to defend their actions in the trial became so involved with the role that they would get incredibly emotional and even sometimes upset and almost 'forget themselves' and their true ideals. I imagine this would work just as well for historical events.
I have used role playing and Tableau (students posing in still images) in my classroom before and it works really well. I particularly like using this teaching strategy because it allows everyone to participate in a meaningful way. The students that love to act and love to get attention really love role playing and the students who would normally never speak in class, can finally get the opportunity to participate in front of the class without having to give a speech on their own...etc. This is also a really good strategy when working with students who don't have a mastery of the language yet and for students with disabilities. When I cover WWII in my US history class, I have done several role playing skits/Tableus; including the Japanese internment and Hiroshima/Nagasaki. I highly recommend that teachers use these techniques in their classrooms.