The postcard activity was pretty successful in my high school classroom, so I felt confident presenting it to our Methods class. Having examples of the finished product helped students visualize the project and imagine what their completed postcard might look like. Overall I think it’s a great way for students to explore primary texts, perform some analysis, while also giving them the freedom to express themselves.
It’s hit or miss getting students to cite their sources. I think providing a clear example of how and where to cite the source would be helpful. Perhaps doing the citation in class would give me the opportunity to monitor their progress. Giving students the ability to hand-draw their postcards was somewhat time consuming; perhaps doing a lesson on how to use adobe spark would be helpful in the future.
Overall, my goal was to get students to engage with a primary text, and see the importance of “individual perspective” in examining source material. Giving students the ability to express themselves seemed to make the lesson more engaging and personal. I was impressed by the variety of responses I received, not to mention the detail and care that went into the postcards themselves.
Glad it went well in your placement. It was certainly instructive in our class. Two suggestions – perhaps instead of giving them big collections of primary sources – you could pre-select a dozen great ones. That might lead them to examine them all and then perhaps be more likely to cite the one they use.
The other thought is that you might also include some first person accounts from old diaries or other sources. They could be short read that might stimulate some great ideas for post cards. Here’s some sources I collected for a project I was working on.