Visual images are very powerful to use with even very young children, they can range from cave paintings to modern digital images. There are real differences between looking at something and visually studying it – pupils need to engage their brain on order to observe really carefully. Pupils also need to start to interpret images but depending on what they are this can be complicated. For example, some portraits will have symbolic meanings included which people of that era would be very familiar with but we are not. Tudor portraits of Elizabeth I fall into this category with many objects deliberately included, and colours chosen, for the messages they gave; in this sense portraits are the Hello magazine and breakfast TV of their day. The messages may have included: 

Costume – chosen for the occasion, significance, may relate to reason for picture e.g. coronation

Expression & Pose- adopted appropriately. Facial expressions are crucial – we identify and assess people through faces. Encourage the children to try holding their heads in different positions with different expressions, how do the different poses make you feel?

Background & Accessories- includes potentially meaningful information – symbols, imagery e.g. angels painted with a living child may portray siblings who did not survive

Colour – Symbolic meanings e.g. white – virginity, black – mourning, purple-grand, red & gold – rich, Royal blue etc

Size & Location – some paintings are larger than life size to be deliberately dominant in a space. Miniatures were made of some important portraits of royalty to show people around the country – who would otherwise not know what their monarch looked like. Minatures also required a great deal of artistic skill and so they were more costly and showed off your wealth. Frames were also chosen to enhance the subject but in later years some pictures have been cut down, this was probably when they were moved to less important places when a new monarch took over.

Medium – Some materials and techniques are more expensive than others – for example, marble is more expensive than clay, oils more than pastels or watercolour.

With paintings or photographs of events you should encourage the children to question whether the scene is portrayed accurately, think about what is happening beyond the photograph or painting especially, and why they have chosen to portray the scene in this particular way. For more general paintings and photographs you may find the following questions useful:

Content

• What do you think is happening?
• What sort of people are in the picture?
• What sort of place are they in?
• What differences are there between people in the picture?
• Who is the most important person in the picture? 
• What do you think has just happened?
• What do you think is going to happen next?
• Can you tell the story of the picture?
• How does the picture make you feel?
• How are things the same/different today?

Authenticity

• Are there any clues telling us when the picture was made?
• Do you think the things happening in the picture are real or imagined?
• What do you think was happening beyond the picture?
• Do you think the person who made the picture was there at the time?
• Have you seen other pictures like this one?
• Do you think the person who made the picture is trying to tell us anything?
• Why do you think the picture was made?

As teachers we need to ensure we include lots of discussion and activities where the pupils are really engaging their thought processes and observing carefully so lots of activities can stem from this.

Some suggested activities:

• Use ‘See – Think – Wonder’ approaches – ask the children to spend a minute looking at the picture then give them a minute to write down everything they can remember seeing, they could then discuss this with other pupils to see what they might have missed. Give them another minute to think about what this means, what can they infer from what they have seen? Then give the pupils another minute to look at the picture and wonder about what they would now like to know
• Annotate for the senses – what could you see/hear/smell/ feel if you were there?
• Devise a title for the picture
• Two pictures of same object—find 5 features same/5 different.
• Three pictures of same type object—order on a timeline—very old , older, old with young children
• Compare/contrast 2 pictures of same scene in different eras (e.g. street-local history), same/different 
• Print object from museum collection or use your whiteboard—what skills were needed to make this? What does this tell us about the people?
• With ‘busy’ pictures play I spy or where’s the x?
• Using variety of pictures count number of people—with less people give them names and ages, draw outlines and add speech/think bubbles
• Ask the children to choose a small section of the picture – freeze frame what the people are doing
• Use several pictures from same period to tell a story.

Some activities adapted from: Turner-Bisset, R. (2012) 2nd Ed. Creative Teaching – History In the Primary Classroom, David Fulton.

Images can be sourced from the national museums like British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery. The Heritage Images website is also useful.

More local images can be found on local Facebook sites, from your local archive office, library or local museums.