I share about this lesson in the podcast Show 7: Lesson Smackdown "Ken vs. Matt". Listen to the full episode at powereduup.com/show7. In this lesson, I engaged the student kinesthetically to learn about different situations and strategies used by both armies in the revolutionary war. This was for a fifth-grade class, but can easily be applied to all grade-levels and different historical topics.
Full disclosure, I'm not a historian. Although I think these simulations are artfully created to help the students conceptualize what happened, they are not perfect. They really helped my students understand the concepts we were reading and developed an emotional connection to the war as well. They felt the anxiety that soldiers in that time would have felt.
The slideshow linked below is a display of questions students had to answer on a paper packet after each simulation. This is the most important part of the lesson. You need to provide students time to synthesize what they experienced and how it relates to the content. Do not rush this portion of the lesson. In the speaker notes section is a description of how to set-up the simulation.
When you do this, HAVE FUN! It's supposed to be a fun, exciting, and engaging way to learn the content. However, I guarantee, your students will remember this content much more than just reading the information.