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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[Frank W. Baker]

This posting reminds me to let you know about the list of other visual literacy texts and visual literacy lesson plans I have posted on the Media Literacy Clearinghouse. Frank Baker