Why choose to make a Gallery?
Time. A Gallery is simpler than a slideshow. Most students can complete and save a Gallery within one class period.
Student expression. The Gallery format is especially good for expressive products, like poems or imaginative stories, as well as more factual or analytical stories or essays.
Teaching Suggestions
In addition to having students create reports or presentations on topics they have studied, you may wish to:
Have students choose a single image from one of the picture sets to write about. Ask them to summarize the subjective feelings it evokes.
Tell students they are newspaper reporters writing about an event or problem at the turn of the century. Their job is to a) find an image that represents a compelling event or problem they have studied, b) verify the document's date, creator, location, etc., and c) write an article that puts the document in the context of its time and place.
Ask students to find two or more contrasting images and write about what the contrast means to them now, and might have meant to people living at the turn of the century.
Obvious contrasts for this time period in U.S. history include the social
experiences of wealthy vs. working class Americans, rural vs. urban
experiences, male and female, and black, white, native American and
Asian American experiences. Regional contrasts, both environmental and
cultural, are also good candidates.
Print out students' galleries and mount the large images and text passages on the classroom wall. Tell them they are curating a mini-museum about modern America, and have them decide the criteria that should guide the arrangementÑchronological, thematic, aesthetic.
Ask students to present their galleries to the rest of the class. Students addressing similar themes may be grouped together. Ask them to describe how their artifacts and their interpretations differ, and how they are similar.
