The Power of Pictures

The Power of Pictures

If it's true that pictures paint a thousand words, why do teachers still try to use thousands of words explaining things to their students?  Cue memories of Charlie Brown’s teacher here.  If you are not doing so already, stop talking every once in a while and show them some pictures!  Pictures are not superficial.  On the contrary, the right pictures are out there to help you teach the content and increase depth of knowledge in student tasks.  Your students want to analyze, comment on, critique, enjoy, and critically think, talk, and write about images.  Trust me.

Granted, some courses are easier than others to use images.  For example, High School U.S. History courses can refer to photographs of the world wars, the Great Depression, assassinations and more.  On the contrary, any topic prior to the early 1800s would have no photographs to analyze.  But even when studying ancient civilizations, there are certainly photographs of artifacts, artwork and structures that could be used.  Teaching math concepts can take advantage of geometric shapes in the real world.  For science, the possibilities are endless for using pictures related to physics, astronomy, biology, and more.  Language Arts should also be taking advantage of pictures as students are expected to analyze, predict, summarize, argue, and defend their positions.  Any elective or enrichment course can do the same.

Using pictures can be powerful.  For the sake of time, or because of a misguided attempt to help them learn, you might be tempted to break it all down and explain everything for your students.  Remember, it is wonderful to model expert thinking for your learners, but don’t forget to leave room for them to practice the analysis on some of the images as well. One of the easiest classroom activities is to encourage students to use context clues as they analyze an image.  What is this?  Where is this?  Why…?  How do you know?  Discuss with a neighbor.  Students can even come up with their own questions.  Comparing multiple images for similarities and differences will likewise allow for prolific discussion.  
The gallery walk is another useful activity as students circulate the room to discuss what they see.  Using images also allows for successful classroom experiences for those to whom success does not come easily.  Print copies if you must, project them on the walls, or share them in the digital classroom.  Get images in front of them to practice critical thinking.  

Here are some resources to consider when using pictures in the history classroom:

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The Sage on a Stage

The Sage on a Stage

“Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.” – Indiana Jones

Students asking questions is a crucial part of developing knowledge. 1994 study found that the average student in the United States only asked a question to their teacher once every ten hours.  This is largely thanks to the centuries old Western educational model that exalts the teacher as the keeper of wisdom, the all-knowing professor; the sage on a stage. 

Wiktionary defines sage-on-a-stage as "an educator, especially at the post-secondary level, who imparts knowledge by lecturing to an audience".  There are reasons why this method has been in vogue since the first European universities emerged in the Middle Ages.  There are also reasons why the educational pendulum has been swinging away from this approach for a while now.

Specifically in the world of social sciences, sage-on-a-stage has worked for centuries because people like stories.  It's the reason we follow things and people on social media.  It's why movies will never go out of style.  It's what drives us to binge-watch on Netflix.  It explains Indiana Jones and his day job as a professor of archeology.  Teachers of History are in a unique position since History is about stories, and children (even adults) are hard-wired for stories. But sages-on-stages can be found across content areas and grade levels, as well.

In recent years, educational leaders have frowned upon the sage-on-a-stage, noting that the teacher often does the lion’s share of the critical thinking, leaving student-engagement and questions largely optional.  The saying, "it's my job to teach and your job to learn" can no longer apply to K-12 classrooms.  The saying should now be, "it's my job to teach and it's my job that you learn".  In the words of Doug Lemov, “You haven’t taught it unless they’ve learned it.”  You may speak like Teddy Roosevelt, about whom it was said, “afterward you have to wring the personality out of your clothes”.  But merely lecturing, however good you may be, don’t guarantee that they learn.  Merely lecturing, however good you may be, don’t guarantee that your students learn.  The pendulum has swung away from teacher-led learning and toward student-led learning as students are expected to read, write and talk about content with deeper complexity in the classroom.

However, it is possible for the teacher to capitalize on students' love of stories without being the sage-on-a-stage doing all the critical thinking for the class.  Students might get the story in a variety of ways, including watching clips, listening to direct instruction, or reading primary sources.  There are lesson designs that blend beautifully the love of stories with a student-focused environment, including high rigor and high engagement.  By all means, use stories to your advantage, just design your lessons to focus on learning, too.

In your quest for balanced lessons and units, consider some of the following:

* Storyboards or comic strip activities to allow students to summarize or retell historical events
* Graphic organizers such as 4x4s (4 causes, 4 figures, 4 details, 4 effects) to hang information
* text-dependent questions that require students to dig deeper into primary sources
* Evaluating, discussing or debating images of historical art, artifacts or photographs
* Guiding students through map activities to bring context to a lesson

Looking for something more specific?  Consider one of these resources...

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