Coats of Arms, Seals, and Other Heraldry

Symbolic seals, crests, and coats of arms are a common concept across cultures. From the simplicity of Japanese mon to the regality of English coats of arms all the way to America’s Great Seal, humans around the world create graphical representations of themselves.

And who doesn’t love all the sigils from Game Of Thrones!?

Creating A Lesson

We could apply these ideas to a lesson in which students:

  • develop an understanding of symbols
  • research college seals
  • discuss family crests
  • develop symbolic seals for themselves
  • create symbols for ideas across subjects

Open With Harry

Let’s start with the crests of the four houses from Harry Potter‘s Hogwarts.

Harryp

Each crest has at least three symbolic items:

  • color
  • animal
  • name

Students can probably explain the significance of Griffindor’s golden lion and Slytherin’s green and purple snake.

College

Next, we can connect students with future goals by examining some university seals:

These typically contain noteworthy items:

  • a motto, possibly in Latin
  • a founding date
  • visual symbols

Further, seals are typically printed only in approved school colors.

Csu

The California State University seal features:

  • a latin slogan Vox Veritas Vita, meaning “Voice, Truth, Life”,
  • the founding date of 1857
  • a book, the state, and a lamp

You can find tons of college and university seals online. Note that official school websites are quite stingy with the size of their images. Wikipedia is a better bet.

Students

Now students can develop seals to represent themselves.

  1. They begin by identifying their most essential trait.
  2. Then they select an object that symbolizes that trait.
    1. Research the symbolism from coats of arms and other heraldry.
    2. Here’s some great instructions for developing an English coat of arms.
    3. Here’s a PDF for creating Japanese mon.
  3. Have them develop a short phrase:
    1. A list of Latin phrases
    2. Or some French proverbs
  4. Create the heraldry on a piece of card stock.

Present

Put these beautiful designs out for viewing:

  1. They can serve as a great way for students to introduce themselves to the class.
  2. Or have students try to match their peers with their coat of arms.
  3. Display them next to student writing.

Apply It To Content

Studying Julius Caesar? Pocahontas? Ebenezer Scrooge? Have students develop symbolic seals to represent these literary and historical figures.

Become even more abstract by asking students to develop symbols for ideas, movements, or groups.

For example, students could create symbols demonstrating their understanding of:

  • An Egyptian dynasty
  • A theme from a reading anthology
  • An art movement, such as cubism or bebop.

For another student symbolism idea, check out this Symbolism and Pixel Art lesson.