I think that the most important and valuable lesson that I took away from this past class was that everyone has a story and it is because of those stories that we have history to look back on. I think this is valuable because it creates not only points of interest but also of personal connection for students studying history. I loved the idea of bringing in artifacts that tell a story of someone in your family’s life and then having students sequentially figure out what was happening from deriving information and interpreting different kinds of primary sources. I noticed that I was far more engaged with this activity than I was when looking at documents of the past I felt no real connection to.
I also really enjoyed the comparison of paintings that we did. At my table we had a discussion about what grades we would use this activity in. Someone at the table said they believed first graders could do it. Though I don’t doubt they could point out differences in the pictures, I think that the key part of this lesson was the analysis of these pictures. The differences meant something historically which I think would benefit students of higher levels of elementary.