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| Dahl, Roald, and Quentin Blake. The BFG. Digital image. The BFG. Wikipedia, 26 Oct. 2008. Web. 7 Sept. 2016. |
Sometimes it’s interesting where our ideas come from. Recently,
while reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG
with my kids, we came across the term gilded. As we stopped to discuss this
word and ensure everyone understood it’s meaning, the history teacher in me
took over and I immediately began thinking of the Gilded Age and of ways to
explain this period to students.
When introducing this era, I often start with the term gilded. This leads us into a
discussion of why a term meaning covered in gold, or having an appearance that
conceals something of little value, is used to describe a historical era. This
often leads to some great predictions from students and gets them thinking
about the time period we are going to study.
I have always felt it is important for students to
understand that the Gilded Age was a time of change in the United States and
that this change benefitted some at the expense of others. My approach to
achieving this instructional goal varied over the years. Several times I had
students create Animoto videos as a response to an essential question related
to this era in history (This project was very similar to the activity I wrote
about in Picture
Perfect – Creating Animoto Videos to Illustrate Life During the Great
Depression).
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| Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives. Digital image. How the Other Half Lives. Wikipedia, 19 Aug. 2007. Web. 7 Sept. 2016. |
The Gilded Age also provides a great opportunity to work on
image analysis. There are a number of excellent images from the Gilded Age for
students to analyze. I enjoy using images and excerpts from Jacob Riis’ How
the Other Half Lives. Riis’ photographs take us into the lives of many
ordinary people in the late 19th century and really drive home the
inequity of the era for students.
This is also a great era to work on analysis of political
cartoons. I love using Thomas Nast’s cartoons to help illustrate key issues of
the Gilded Age (Nast’s works are available through many different sources,
including the Library
of Congress). These cartoons are not only telling about the era, but they
also provide an opportunity for students to practice analyzing political
cartoons. There are many different effective approaches to teaching students
how to analyze political cartoons; I often discuss the persuasive
techniques common to political cartoons and use the Primary
Source Analysis Tool for political cartoons from the Library of Congress. Through
this process I want to stress to students that they need to look for symbols in
the cartoon, see what action is taking place in the cartoon, examine any text
(speech/thought bubbles, captions, labels, etc.), and then determine the
message and/or opinion put forth in the cartoon.
As I was explaining the term gilded to my kids recently, I
thought of another instructional strategy that allows students to demonstrate
understanding of the changes and inequities of this era in history. I think it
would be a great activity to have students illustrate how the term gilded
represents this time period. Students could create drawings showing wealth and
perceived progress covering up the exploitation and problems within American
society. This allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the United
States’ struggles with growth and the conflicts between wealth vs. poverty,
urban vs. rural, industrial vs. artisan, reform vs. corruption, etc. Drawings
are an excellent way to assess student understanding of key concepts.
I have used student illustrates to gauge understanding in
the past, but I guess I had never thought of applying it to this topic. I like
the idea of asking students to draw. This allows them to express their
creativity and gives students who are better at expressing themselves in this
way an opportunity to demonstrate understanding.
