Can’t think of a way to force your students to process information and utilize higher order thinking skills? Make them draw! By converting written words and thoughts into pictures, students are at least applying the knowledge and at best synthesizing it into something brand new.

A great method for Social Studies and Language Arts that uses this approach is called historical heads. What do you need? Knowledge of a person or group of people, a blank outline of a head (Blank Historical Head), and some creativity.

First, students choose a person or group of people to analyze. In a Language Arts classroom this would be a character in a book. In Social Studies, it might be a specific person in history (i.e. George Washington) or a social group (i.e. Patriots in American colonies).

Then, students think about what is going on in that person’s head. What is he or she thinking about? What is essential to his or her character? What are his or her motives?

Finally, the student takes a blank outline of a head and draws images to represent these ideas. When complete, the historical head should have 3-5 drawings inside and provide a view into that person?s character.

Along with the pictures, the student should write a short explanation at the bottom. One or two sentences per picture should suffice. This will help the instructor decipher the pictures and prevent the student from scribbling meaningless sketches.

Let’s look at an example. If a student is doing a historical head on Patriots, he needs to think about who the patriots were and why they were patriots.

One picture could be a man in a blue uniform - representing a Colonial Regular. Another picture could be of a merchant ship - representing the merchants in Boston. Another could be a person giving a speech - representing political dissidents that wanted to experiment with republican or democratic self rule.

The exercise serves two purposes. First, it gives the student an outlet for the information he or she is gaining. It is generally a good practice to give the students a short introduction and then release them to the historical heads with more information. This way the student can do further research and apply it in the assignment.

Second, it helps the teacher assess whether or not a student understands the content. Students are well trained to remember and recite information from a textbook or lecture - but you cannot simply recite a picture. If a student can put his or her words into a picture, then he or she truly understands the concept.

This is a quick, fun assignment that can be used as an activity in many lessons. Social Studies and Language Arts are full of characters and social groups. If the students have access to enough information, they can certainly create a historical head.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Methods, Resources, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.