Making History Come Alive

Engage:

I have never seen the painting pictured above before now. Although I do not how whose paintings these are and the history of them, I can guess that they represent important people throughout history. I believe that the first painting is a man standing in a court room standing up for something he believes in while the people around him stare in awe. I think that the second one is some sort of religious representation as the lady with white hair is holding her hands together in a praying position with her eyes closed and the lady next to her is holding a rosary. The third picture looks like a family that is about to eat dinner while the mother/cook serves the food on the table. The last painting I believe is a mother and father tucking their child into bed. I am sure that all of these paintings have some sort of important historical significance and I would love to learn more about them.

Explore: Making History Alive

Using technology in the classroom can make lessons more interesting and engaging for students. One way that teachers can incorporate technology into their lesson is through the use of slideshows. As teachers discusses events and individuals, they can use a slideshow presentation to show pictures, maps and  timelines. This is so that students can make the connection between what is being said and what is being seen. Teachers can also incorporate clips of videos during the lesson to show reenactments of historical events. Teachers can also take the opportunity to pause the videos for discussion as well as give students the opportunity to ask questions or make comments. There are also many different tools and websites on the Internet for teachers to access and use for their lessons. Two of the ones that I found to be most interesting were: 

1. Bringing History to life for you Students -- DocsTeach is for teachers, students and history explorers. I really like this resource because it allows anyone to access thousands of primary sources ranging from letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos and more that span the course of American history. There is also an option for creating your own activities using the online tools in this resource. It's as simple as selecting a tool, choosing a primary source and then customizing instructions. 

2. Document Analysis with Students -- I really like this resource as well because it shows students the first steps in working with primary sources. It also teaches students how to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information in order to make informed judgements. The steps in this process include: 

• Meeting the document
• Observing its parts 
• Trying to make sense of it
• Using it as historical evidence 

Explore: Learning to Teach with Primary Sources

Primary sources are extremely important and helpful when it comes to teaching Social Studies/History. Primary sources are documented evidence of history and they help students relate in a personal way to events of the past. They also help to promote a deeper understanding of history. Primary sources give us a unique insight into the past. We can better understand how events influenced people's feelings and how they thought about them at the time. 

Explain & Apply:

Artifact Bag Project

An artifact bag project is a hands-on activity that can be integrated into any grade and subject. A teacher can use an artifact bag for many different topics, subjects and units within a grade.  Artifact bags engage students in learning, along with them taking pride in their discoveries based on the artifacts within the bag. Before the assignment to create an artifact bag, I had never heard of it before. When I began creating the artifact bag project I had to think of what event, act or person I wanted it to be about. I decided that I wanted it to be about the French and Indian War. If I were to teach this lesson to an actual class, I would teach it using the inquiry method because of the fact that students are able to discover artifacts and understand where they came from. 

Elaborate:

Chapter 12 Digital Report - Connections to History

• Essential Question - How do we make History come alive?