Hogarth's print, "Gin Lane" (1751):

Your group's job is as follows:

1.  Jot down as many brief descriptions of what's going on here as you can -- just make a list of the things you see.  By doing this, you are ANALYZING:  breaking down a picture, or written text, or anything really, into its component parts to see how it works.

2.  Try to brainstorm a couple of PATTERNS in the information.  Establish a couple of categories that you can sort the various items in the picture.  You won't be able to sort everything into your categories; that's perfectly OK.

3.  Then, I'll supply you with some further information that you can apply to the patterns you've established.

4.  And this is, basically, how the process of academic analysis works.  Break down a text into its parts, establish patterns in the parts, and relate the patterns to other information -- here, information about the "gin craze" in 18th-Century London.  But for a American history class, you might be given Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, asked to find patterns in it, and relate those patterns to the idea of the American Dream.  Or, later in the semester, you'll be asked to pick an interesting magazine ad, list what you see in it, find patterns in that list, and relate these patterns to information about the rhetoric of advertising that I'll provide to you.

Here's Hogarth's companion piece, "Beer Street."