Helping students to categorise and define events and ideas

Students analyse images before putting them in thematic or chronological order.

The teacher provides any number of images for the students to analyse and discuss before putting them in an order, either thematic or chronological. This will help students define key ideas or events of a period or a theme.

When studying crime and punishment students are given 15 images and 15 text boxes. The images range from medieval sorcery to modern computer crimes. Students group the images they feel are connected, they link text and images and finally they discern four main themes for the topic.

For a ready worked example see: https://www.ashmolean.org/learning-resource-medieval-world. There are downloadable images of artefacts and teacher notes about how to use them to explore the medieval world and to think of questions to ensure a good discussion.

Acknowledgements: Richard McFahn, Neil Bates and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK.