A Picture’s Worth

Analyzing Historical Photographs in the Elementary Grades A PICTURE CAN BE WORTH a thousand words--and maybe a lot more. Imagine the response of students as their teacher holds up a black-and-white photo (Figure 1) in which vintage cars fill a city street. A curved sign, "THEATRES," arches over the traffic, and people line the sidewalks. She asks: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "What do you think is going on in this old picture? Talk to the person sitting next to you and see if you agree with each other." Students strain to get a better view. After allowing a few minutes for discussion, the teacher asks for ideas and their reasoning. Abilio thinks it must be a parade because of all the old cars; Leneisha suggests people are "hanging out" on the streets after work, because that's what her father and his friends do. Other students mention shopping or going to the movies. The teacher records these contributions on the board under two headings: What people are doing and Why we think so. "Those are good suggestions, and you've done a good job of giving reasons for your ideas. Today you're going to begin looking at other old pictures I've downloaded from the Internet. Together with your partners, you'll keep track of what you think is going on in each picture, and why you think so." The Basics of Authentic Instruction In recent years, educators have stressed the need to engage students in authentic tasks--those that resemble the challenges people face outside of school, whether as professionals, consumers, family members, or citizens.(1) In the teaching of history, authentic instruction involves students directly in the analysis and interpretation of historical information. Such instruction includes: * Formulating historical questions or problems, * Gathering information from a variety of sources, * Evaluating the authenticity and reliability of sources, * Comparing conflicting accounts, * Taking the perspective of people in the past, and * Connecting disparate pieces of information into coherent explanations. Such skills are by no means the exclusive preserve of academic historians; they are used by those who trace family histories, report the news, design an exhibit in a museum, or create a documentary. We all use these skills when we judge the accuracy and meaning of the evening news, fiction and nonfiction books, museum displays, films, and family recollections. The ability to analyze and interpret historical information is crucial in helping us judge the reliability and meaning of stories from the past. What Children Bring to the Classroom For children in the early grades, visual materials--both photographs and other kinds of pictures--tap into a wider range of historical information than do activities based solely on oral or written language. Children often become familiar with the past through television programs, family pictures, or outings to historic sites, so their historical understanding depends on recognizing visual details. As a result, even children as young as six years old are capable of using pictures to make comparisons with the present, to put historical periods in sequence, to describe historical changes in terms of cause and effect, to take on the perspectives of people in the past, and to develop their own historical questions.(2) From a practical perspective, children enjoy working with pictures, particularly those that include people--they like looking at such images, talking about them, and trying to figure out what's going on in them. All of these factors make the use of pictures a highly enticing and productive method of instruction. Analyzing photographs, however, also calls for skills that children rarely develop without explicit instruction and practice. Placing a photo into a larger historical context is one such skill. …