History and Art

Synthesis
Jetton:
History is tough! Chapter 8 discussed protocols through analysis of two students, Ayesha and Brad, who had different approaches to reading and thinking about history. History provides a unique opportunity to examine validity and viewpoints through analysis, synthesis, and inference/evaluation of various accounts and texts. An effective teacher will guide students through various texts and give them opportunities to discuss their findings and opinions rather than relying solely on a textbook to teach major events because the teacher knows that students must be able to synthesize and evaluate sources in order to be productive and successful historian. The skill of reconciling different viewpoints, though, is a much-needed lifeskill and can be applied to other content areas as well.

Chapter 9 discussed literacy in the arts and the unique challenge of literacy in subjects that rely on symbols, sounds, and artifacts rather than written language. The arts are a prime area in which to incorporate multimodal literacies such as videos, songs, podcasts, paintings, photographs, and the like. The arts have unique vocabularies and literacies that students must master, and students must be able to synthesize and apply their arts-specific vocabulary and background knowledge in order to understand, identify, critique, and create materials. These skills require higher-level thinking which can also translate into other content areas.

Hinchman:
This chapter also stressed the importance of students critically thinking about historical texts rather than relying solely on the textbook's explanation. The authors stated that historians (and therefore students) needed to do 3 things with historical texts in order to think about ideas: source, contextualize, and corroborate. An effective way for teachers to get students to do this is to provide them with conflicting, contradicting texts that challenge them to sort through facts, opinions, points of views, and purposes in order to glean a true understanding of what actually occurred.

Connection
Text-to-self: I don't remember analyzing contradicting texts in history; I only remember being exposed to various primary source documents. For me, history was mass memorization, and I never did as well in class as I wanted, and I never really learned as much as I had hoped it. I wonder how different my history classes in high school would have been if there was more of a focus on reconciling viewpoints rather than just memorizing facts.

Text-to-text: These chapters continued to reiterate that disciplinary texts are written differently and take different skill sets to work successfully through them. These books as well as others on disciplinary texts all stress the importance of using different literacy strategies in the different content areas.

Text-to-world: As I stated above, being able to recognize there are different versions and viewpoints in history as well as in everyday life. Being able to appreciate this and analyze what you hear and realize you may not have all the facts before forming an opinion would help students in their personal lives as well.

Questions: 
1) How do you motivate reluctant readers to navigate multiple and sometimes complex texts when they lack the motivation/skills to read the textbook?
2) How do you incorporate art into your curriculum? How receptive are students to it?