Reflect on Your Practice

In this section, you will reflect on ways that you have analyzed non-text primary sources with your students. Discuss the following questions with your colleagues or reflect on them in your journal. Use specific examples wherever possible.

1. What kinds of activities related to interpreting non-text primary sources, particularly ones with a very specific point of view, have you done with your students?
2. What were the value and goals of these activities? What skills and understandings did the students gain as a result of these activities?
3. What were the challenges of doing these activities? What didn't work, and why?
4. When working with propaganda materials, how do you caution or guide students through the materials evaluation process without inappropriately influencing their interpretation?
5. In what ways do propaganda materials help to explain historical events or phenomena? What are their benefits and limitations as documents that try to explain why things happened?