30. Teaching Through Photographs and Art

Ellie 0:00

Hey Brittany, can you take a look in your phone and pick one of your last five pictures and describe it to me?

Brittany 0:07

Well, okay, let's see what I have three pictures of our blinds, a copy of my appointment schedule. Okay, so let's go with the next picture. Oh, phew. It's my daughter's cat, Merlin. Let's see, he's sitting on my desk staring me down. He's a all black cat minus a little tiny white patch on his chest. And he has a color. It's got his rabies tag, an air tag, a city license, and a bell.

Ellie 0:39

Okay, so just from that, we can tell that you take great care of your animals. If you get them licensed with the city and you have air tags on them. You also follow the law. What's around the cat that you can see?

Brittany 0:54

Well, you can see my Pepsi on my desk. My four monitors in the background, two keyboards, a trackball ,and my speaker control knob. That's about it.

Ellie 1:06

You have four monitors and two keyboards? You must love technology. Welcome to the teaching Toolbox Podcast. I'm Ellie, and I'm here with Brittany

Brittany 1:16

Hello.

Ellie 1:17

And today we're talking all about the use of photographs and art in your teaching, they're a lot more powerful than you may think.

Brittany 1:25

using primary sources to teach social studies is a requirement in the standards. We can achieve that through using newspaper or magazine articles, political cartoons, speeches, or letters from the past old diaries, listening to music and recordings of old and more. Each one offers words from the past captured in a time and place and circumstance unique to itself. But two other options exist as well that we're going to talk about in detail, using artwork, and using photographs. And not just looking at these items, but using them more like a scavenger hunt or detective game to unearth more information about the past.

Ellie 2:09

Ooh, I'm excited about it. So one way to teach a time period and get your primary sources in is to use artwork from the time this allows you to see the style colors, topics and figures of the time. If you walk through the art chronologically, you can also see the changes that occur over the time period as well. You can show the difference between the rich and poor by showing differences in attire, the colors that are worn, whether they have jewelry or not, as well as what's in the background? Is it flowers, a pretty table, something ornate? Or is it bread, a dog or cat or just a person? By looking at architecture and buildings, houses or landscape, you can see what styles are popular. Again, what colors are popular, how innovation was changing the world or if things were calmer, quieter, more laid back.

Brittany 3:01

I use art as a part of my French Revolution curriculum. We look at portraits of the main players examine the style used, whether the strokes are harsh or soft. And the same with the colors. We look at details and the lack thereof. For instance, from a look at French revolutionary fighters, you can see they all wear longer pants that aren't hemmed. Thus, you can now explain as a teacher, the name sans-culottes for those fighters, because they're there without culottes. So they're called sans-culottes, they almost all also wear red stocking caps to thus deriving the name red caps. If you want to get into a philosophical discussion, you can discuss with your students what came first, the picture or the name, the artist picture them like that, thus giving them that name. Thus they then dress like that, or did they dress like that? And then were depicted as they are? For fifth sixth and seventh graders. That's a great discussion topic. I mean, there's kind of an obvious answer. But the kids really get into whether or not you know, it's kind of the chicken and the egg kind of discussion. We also use artwork of famous events such as the storming of the Bastille, the women's march to Paris and the death of Marat to get an idea of what these events might have looked like as well.

Ellie 4:31

That's very thought provoking when you're thinking about like having kids think about that. Using old photographs are also a fantastic way to teach a lesson or at least part of it by really using pictures instead of just displaying them for students to see you can become a detective and learn so much more about a person that time period or an event. So think of a picture you recently took on your phone like we did with Brittany's pictures. You probably had a focal character or two but Did you think about all that picture could tell a stranger?

Brittany 5:04

Like, what does the clothing say about money? Wealth, the seasons, comfortability, your freedoms? What do the expressions on the people's faces say about their experience? Are they having fun? Or are they sad, angry, confused? Are people interacting in the picture? What is around them in the foreground or background? And what did those items say about the times? What's the Endeavor happening, the experience and the outcome desired?

Ellie 5:36

It's interesting that I often want to cut out the background in my pictures of things that I don't want to show. Because I'm like, Oh, well, it looks messy, or that's not what I was focusing on. But in in doing that, I'm also cutting out a lot of that information, which, you know, if if children or grandchildren look at that years from now, they might wonder what else what else was in there?

Brittany 6:00

I actually did that when I was like, 14, I took all of my photographs that I had. And I cut out the backgrounds of every single picture. And so I just have, like the people or, you know, the dog or the mountain, right? I don't have the backgrounds anymore.

Ellie 6:20

That's interesting. So generations from now, if those pictures, pictures get carried on, there's only so much that they're going to be able to tell like I think about pictures I have, that my mother has from her grandmother. And you can see the backgrounds you know, they are the people with backgrounds. So there is something that you can you can figure out from that, even if nobody is there to tell you.

Brittany 6:42

So when you're looking at pictures from the past, for instance, a bowl of fruit can show wealth or tidiness or a healthy diet, pets can show compassion, caring for others, they can indicate wealth. The hottest tech can show a very forward thinking mine or someone up on the latest trends,

Ellie 7:05

like you with your four monitors.

Brittany 7:08

Ellie 7:17

So let's think about a few ways that we could use photos and art to teach time periods in middle school. One thing you can do is create visual timelines. So you can encourage students to create artistic timelines that show key events in history using primary sources. This can help them understand the sequence of events and the context in which they occurred. Students can use drawings, paintings, or collages to represent each event.

Brittany 7:44

That's the method I actually use when I teach the timeline unit in my Colorado State History curriculum. Awesome. You can do an artistic document analysis encourage students to visually represent primary source documents through art. For example, students could create illuminated manuscripts based on historical texts, illustrating key passages or themes using artistic techniques such as calligraphy, illustrations and decorative borders. This activity can help students engage with primary sources in a more creative and memorable way.

Ellie 8:22

That's awesome. You can do historical figure portraits by asking students to research a historical figure and create a portrait based on primary source descriptions or images. This activity can help students develop a deeper meaning or deeper understanding of historical figures and the time periods in which they lived. You can encourage students to use different artistic styles and mediums to bring these figures to life in their artwork.

Brittany 8:49

I could see like during the French Revolution, Goya was very popular and he liked. He switched partway through the revolution, okay to using very dark colors, to show that the revolution was a very dark and scary time. Okay, so I could see the kids kind of showing that in their art using very dark colors to represent different figures. That'd be very neat or like doing a very Picasso esque kind of historical figure. Good idea. Yeah, you could do a museum exhibit project. Have students work collaboratively to curate a museum exhibit based on a specific historical event or time period. using primary sources as the foundation for their displays. Students can create artwork, informational panels and interactive elements to convey the significance of the primary sources to visitors. This project helps students develop critical thinking skills, historical empathy, which we all need and a deeper appreciation for the role. Love primary sources and understanding history.

And then who doesn't love taking the museum tour? Exactly. And offering feedback or, you know, writing reflections,

do a gallery walk with it, that's a great idea,

you could create a primary source detective activity where students are given a set of historical photographs, and are tasked with analyzing them to draw conclusions about the time period, location, and people involved. This hands on approach can help students develop the critical thinking skills and gain a deeper understanding of historical events.

I know a lot of teachers kind of do that activity with objects, like on the first day of school, they'll put out a tray of some of their things and make the kids kind of learn about them through objects, right, but you could actually do it with pictures from your life, like maybe a picture of your dog and, or picture of your house or something and have students learn about you through photographs.

Yeah, that's awesome, great idea.

You could implement a picture this project where students select a historical photograph and research the context behind it, they can then create a presentation or write a short essay discussing the significance of the photograph, and how it reflects the time period in which it was taken. This project encourages students to engage with primary sources. In a creative and meaningful way.

You can organize a history through lens exhibition, where students curate a collection of historical photographs related to a specific topic or time period. And they can create captions for each photograph explaining its significance, and then present their exhibition to their classmates or teachers or parents. This activity helps students research, communicate, and improves their presentation skills, while deepening their understanding of primary sources,

introduce a snapshot of the past storytelling activity, where students select a historical photograph. And imagine the story behind it. They can write a short narrative or dialogue based on the photograph, incorporating historical facts and details to bring the scene to life. This exercise encourages students to empathize with people from the past, and think creatively about historical events.

This reminds me if not entirely historical related, but when I was teaching, second grade, and we had center activity types of things, I would display just a photograph of something. And then they had to write a creative story about it, whether it was an animal, or you know, just a scene of something, anything, you know, and I think I pulled them from calendars. So even have a lot of those. But that's a great, you know, if you're an elementary school teacher listening, that it's a great way to get them started with with some of that storytelling is just using those pictures. Yeah, and having them create a story behind it.

I would do that a lot in language arts as well, I would take photographs of different out of different magazines and laminate them. And then I just had a giant pile of probably like 500, and the kids would just pick a photograph and then write a story about that photograph. So it's a great idea.

You can host a time travelers tail event where students dress up as characters from historical photographs and present monologues or dialogues embodying the perspective of the individuals in the images. This immersive experience helps students connect on a personal level with the past fostering empathy and understanding for the people and events depicted in the photographs.

You can also initiate a through their eyes project, where students research the photographers behind the historical photographs, and explore their lives, motivations and impact on society. By understanding the storytellers behind the lens, students gain a deeper appreciation for the art of photography and the role it plays in documenting history.

I love that idea. Yeah, getting you know, the photographer's perspective, I love that. And one more idea for you. You can take pictures of old painted billboards on buildings around your city, and have students research them and explore what these say about your city of old.

I have always wanted to make a coffee table book of old painted on Billboard signs and the history behind those signs. Maybe in retirement if there are any left.

That sounds like a great idea. Let's start now and work on it just a little bit at a time.

I love those old painted billboards. So and so all of these ideas are great for getting more writing into

your house thinking as we were talking about the you know, incorporating language arts into that.

Using photographs and art not only get your primary source analysis in the books, it opens up a whole new way. way of thinking for your students, creating new mindsets, getting students to wonder and ask questions and exploration of history and ideas all helped to create lifelong learners. And that is what we're really after.

So we hope you're able to grab onto some of these ideas and add them to your teaching toolbox. We'll see you next time.

Bye