LESSON: Picture This! Building Photo-Based Writing Skills

[Ryan Goble]

Great lesson plan from the New York Times Learning Network! Bonus points as it is co-written by an MC POP person!

Picture This! Building Photo-Based Writing Skills
By SARAH KAVANAGH AND KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Overview - How can you use the Learning Network feature 6 Q’s About the News to build writing, language and news literacy skills? In this lesson, students use photographs to practice writing, vocabulary and skimming skills to develop literacy and/or prepare for standardized tests.

Materials - An interesting photograph, one per small group, mounted on a large sheet of paper, computers with Internet access, paper, pens/pencils, classroom board

Full lesson can be found here.

For those of you interested in using photos to build literacy skills I would also HIGHLY recommend checking out this book for some pretty sophisticated "reading text" ideas. The book was designed for high school high school AP Language and Comp teachers as that exam now has a visual literacy element.

While some of the ideas might be too advanced, you will certainly be able to adapt a lot of the ideas. The book can be found at Amazon and Norton has a page for the book with additional details/samples.

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[Anne Gaspers]

Try out piclits I use it with Level 1 Spanish students through AP. The trick that I was taught is to have a generic username and password that you give to the students, that way they can all archive in one place so you don't have to worry about having problems sending (I'm not sure if you can). It's a fun and quick activity as well as a great way for students to get extra participation points if they need it.

[Ryan Goble]

Anne, great idea - looks totally cool & useful - thanks for sharing. If you have the mojo you should make Piclits a separate discussion post!!

Thanks as always for rocking!!

RRG:)