The Mystery Photo is one of the common classroom activities we like to share with our TPS workshop attendees. It is very\u00a0easy to implement in any classroom and gives students the opportunity to engage with history outside of their textbook.<\/p>\n
Plus, it can truly be adapted for any subject, whether it be history, social studies, science, or anything else. The key is to find the right primary source!<\/p>\n
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Find a primary source that goes along with a lesson plan you are just beginning to teach. Take out all indications of what the picture literally represents, but leave in the subtle hints that point to historical context. This is good for assessing student\u2019s prior knowledge as well as providing a perfect teaching moment.<\/p>\n
The image above is entitled \u201cSchool Begins<\/a>\u201d and is great for broad lessons plans about the late 1800s and early 1900s because it attempts to handle a number of issues that were important at the time, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, bringing in new US Territories, race discrimination, the after effects of the American Civil War, and Native American assimilation through education.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Give your students the source and have them go through the Observe, Reflect, Question Primary Source Analysis Tool<\/a>. Don\u2019t let students skip ahead.<\/em> Make them separate their thoughts into each of these sections and then at the end you can bring it all together. The magic of this activity happens when students are able to connect their observations with content knowledge.<\/p>\n To get the students out of their seats and engaging with one another, break them off into groups and give each group three different colors of sticky notes. Have students write down their Observations, Reflections, and Questions individually on the sticky notes, and then get them to put the sticky notes up on a section of the blackboard\/whiteboard labeled accordingly.<\/p>\n This activity can also work well after you have taught a section but haven\u2019t introduced them to the primary source. Doing it this way is a great for testing content knowledge outside of the textbook. If done with a source that has a wide array of topics, like School Begins, you can\u00a0assess how well students were able to digest and understand an entire semester\u2019s worth of content.<\/p>\n We also created a Prezi<\/a> for the School Begins image you can use as well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Mystery Photo is one of the common classroom activities we like to share with our TPS workshop attendees. It is very\u00a0easy to implement in any classroom and gives students the opportunity to engage with history outside of their textbook. Plus, it can truly be adapted for any subject, whether it be history, social studies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":877,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-primary-sources","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Classroom Activity<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Key Questions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Hints<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Grade Level Recommendation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Skills Used<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Helpful Links<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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