Best Practices

The Civil War in Art: Teaching and Learning Through Chicago Collections includes two useful analysis guides: one for art and one for primary sources. The art analysis guide—developed for the TERRA Foundation for American Art—includes questions that can help students learn to use both aesthetic analysis and historical context to interpret art.

The one-page primary source analysis worksheet, uses the acronym ICE AGE to prompt analysis activities. Students Identify, Contextualize, Explore, Analyze, consider Gaps, and Evaluate. Each of these activities includes questions to guide students through interpreting textual and visual historical evidence. Like the TERRA art guide, ICE AGE asks students to inform their understanding of a primary source by considering its creator, historic context, and relationship to other pieces of evidence.