My English teacher had us read four short stories, all sharing the same theme of "outsiders." For each of them, she wanted us to make a collage to articulate the social boundaries in the story as well as its meaning. Why she could not stop with the analysis questions she had us answer, I have no idea. But it has left a very bad taste in my mouth when it comes to using art as "creative expression" for non-art subjects. I had some assignments like this before in history, and everyone found out that it was basically an easy A for all but the laziest students. You didn't have to understand history at all, you just had to look like you got the gist of it, and put it on your poster or picture or fingerpainting or whathaveyou. I believe that there should be more art courses in school, but using art to gauge students' comprehension of a concept is much less accurate than tests and quizzes. If the kids don't have the language skills (language disabilities notwithstanding), then history class is a good place to hone them, because they're going to need it for the rest of their life. (I don't think that history teachers should expect War and Peace or be total grammarians, though.) But yeah, I'm pretty unimpressed with teachers forcing the part of the class that actually has reading comprehension skills to participate in what is essentially meaningless busy work for them, just because some kids "need an opportunity to show their learning creatively."
At most, I'd give them a set of questions to answer (that is, the baseline of what they need to know), and let them answer in writing, pictures, or both, as long as it makes sense.
