Looping Sketchbook - Social Studies

I chose to draw a picture for this looping sketchbook.  The picture I drew depicts my own local environment.  I included schools, a church, a gas station, a grocery store, and various fast food chains as well as resturaunts that are located around my home.  I also chose to include green areas such as a golf course and a small lake located around my area as well.  I chose to depict the article Walking and Talking Geography this way because this is an excersize that the students themselves would be doing.  After reading the article I am not able to understand how important it is for students to understand their local surroundings as well as their resources associated with the area.  Asking students to be aware of their resources gives them the opportunity to discover their role in their community.

During this week’s readings we learned about the different perspectives that each situation has.  In the reading we saw that students drew pictures based on different people’s perspectives.  An example of this was when one student drew a picture of how the Indians felt when the Europeans came to their land.  One perspective was that the Indians were uncomfortable with the Europeans being on their land and wondered why they were there.  The other perspective showed that the Europeans were excited to finally reach land after being on the Ocean for so long.  I decided to follow this thought and came up with my own two perspectives based on the same concept.  I drew one perspective showing that Columbus was excited to bring back riches for his country and to have discovered a new land. I drew the other perspective showing that the Indians were scared and were questioning why the Europeans were taking their people land. ...

This week’s readings were about primary sources and what we information we can gather from them. Honestly, I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned from middle and high school about the importance of primary sources so being able to relearn this information has been really beneficial to me as a future teacher.  I decided to draw a picture that portrayed multiple types of primary sources. The first thing I drew was The Diary of Anne Frank. I think many people forget that this is a primary source because it is seen as a book but in actuality it is a diary from Anne Frank herself.  I also chose to draw an autobiography for the same reason.  I also drew a picture of a newspaper and a picture of the moon landing because both were taken/written during the time period itself. I think primary sources are important because they give us an idea of what was really happening during specific times. 

For this week’s entry I decided to draw a picture portraying the story of Columbus that we read about in our readings.  I decided to draw three different ‘visions’ of what happened, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and his three ships.  I also decided to include how Columbus took Indian servants back to Spain when he could not find any gold on the island.  The last thing that I included in the drawing was how the population of the Indians on the island declined once the Europeans arrived. I think it is important to portray all aspects of the story because each part has its own important historical context.  If I had the artistic ability to add more details to really portray even the emotions and thoughts of both the Europeans and the Indians I would have. Overall, I believe it is really important to tell our students the truth about historical events, and this reading has really made me aware of the faults in my own education. 

       For this third looping sketchbook entry I decided to write a short story.  In all honesty I probably wrote it in my own perspective, even though I was trying to write it from the perspective of a random student.  In the short story I gave the impression that the student is upset because they have been 'lied' to concerning the realities of history. They want the truth to be told to them and they want the choice to decide what is morally right or wrong after given the facts.  I chose to do a short story because I thought being able to see into the mind of student would be an interesting take on the articles.  I personally have felt some of these things after learning the truth about certain events in history and so I wanted to portray that in a short story.

       In a multicultural classroom there are many advantages.  I chose to show this in my looping sketchbook by creating a picture of a classroom with exactly 7 desks/students in it.  On the white board in the classroom is the statement, "Multicultural education is...".  I then label each desk/student with the bulleted reasons why a multicultural education is beneficial.  I also included a world map on the side of the classroom to show that studying the different continents, countries, and cultures is a vital part of education and establishes a knowledgeable environment.  I think drawing a picture of a multicultural classroom and it's benefits was a good option for this topic because a lot can be said in just a simple picture.  If I could add to the drawing it would be to include maybe an array of different students in a way that clearly shows different cultures. Unfortunately my artistic skills are not up to par with that idea.