ABSTRACT
The historical arts help students address different questions than do more traditional print sources. The arts serve as primary source documents that help to understand the time and place in which they were produced. As Jeannette says, it is hard to imagine teaching about ancient Greece without reference to its art, literature and architecture. In Jeannette’s classroom, she draws on music, dance, drama, literature, and the visual arts and feels strongly that each makes a contribution to her students’ understanding of history and social studies. Her students expect the arts to be an integral part of their historical study. As children gain more background knowledge in history, they use that information in their own artistic productions and in interpreting the historical arts. The kind of teacher mediation necessary to help students accomplish these tasks varies, of course, with the degree of familiarity the students have with the arts and their background knowledge of the history depicted.
