Looping Sketchbook - Social Studies

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.