Time Travel at The New School
To introduce our Local History unit all the children at The New School were sent home a different historical postcard of a Syracuse scene. The postcards were dated from the 1920’s to 1930’s. Using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), students were asked to look at the postcard and list as many different things going on in the postcard. Next they were asked to consider what made them say that?
Parents were asked to take their child(ren) to the site depicted in the postcard and take a modern day photograph of the site from the same exact perspective. While at the site the children made notes about what is the same and what is different about the area. What changed over time?
At school, one by one, each child presented what they learned to the whole school community. As the location of the postcard was identified on a large map of Syracuse the students soon noticed that nearly all the postcards were of places located in the heart of the city. They were all “public places, like train stations, post offices, and shops.”