Digging into Visual Docments: 

What do I see in the source that helps me understand my topic?  

First, I'm going to look at the poster to see how it can help me understand the event and answer my essential question,  'Why would British soldiers shoot and kill American colonists at the Boston Massacre?'

I see that this poster was "engraved, printed and sold by Paul Revere," a Boston printer and silversmith.  I found out that this poster was widely distributed and seen by a lot of people very shortly after the Boston Massacre took place.

Poster of the Boston Massacre
Description | Source
A poster showing British soldiers shooting into a crowd of American colonists.
Poster showing a crowd of men and boys from Boston on the left, arranged in a disorganized group. Two men are laying on the ground, bleeding and a third man is being carried away. On the right side of the poster, British soldiers, dressed in bright red jackets, stand in two lines and are firing their long guns into the crowd. A commanding officer, slightly behind the soldiers, raises his sword. Buildings from the town of Boston can be seen in the background.Digital Source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division viewed on 9/15/09; http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/app:@FIELD%28NUMBER%283b51693%29%29

Click here for an online version of the poster.  Use it to take a closer look.

What do you think?

What can a poster tell you about an event, and how does it communicate the information? Check Pedro, Hali and Monty for ideas on how to find and understand information in this kind of source.  

 

 

Terry's Tips

Leverage the power of hyperlinks to support historical inquiry 

On this page, the author supports student engagement with visual documents by providing a link to a digital version of the source; this encourages students to interact and interpret historical documents themselves. 

Coaches support the process of historical inquiry by guiding the evaluation of the visual document and relating it to the critical question.