Storyboarding the Revolution

A visual activity I have created for my classroom combines activities that we participated in, in two different History Connected Seminars. I would borrow images from our most recent visit to the MFA, broadcasting images the Revolutionary War. I would then borrow an activity we did during our visit to the Antiquarian Society last year where we told a narrative through images.

I would create an electronic gallery of images by providing multiple different paintings from the Revolutionary War and asking groups of students to tell a story using five of the images. They can order the pictures either in chronological order, or in some other interesting artistic order. The end goal is to explain America’s revolution using MFA images as a medium of story telling. The narrative they create needs to explain some aspect of the Revolution, some examples being the story of the average American helping out, the bravery of General Washington, overcoming long odds against the British, or the story of slaves fighting for the Continental Army.

I believe this activity will ask students to look at bigger, overarching themes in the war, which will help them to address enduring legacies that have had long-term impact on the country. The activity can also be augmented to address a unit’s essential questions directly.

Here is the gallery students can use to create their storyboards: http://educators.mfa.org/galleries/gallery_create/4316