Robert (Harrell) reminds us about boston.com. below. This is something Paul Kirschling does all the time. That’s his lesson plan. He uses pictures to teach culture. He puts up the picture and off they go.
I made a kind of composite list of cue words at the bottom of this post, taken from stuff sent in by both Bob Patrick’s and Robert Harrell. They are used to spur writing (mainly free writes) connected to stories but why couldn’t they be be used to get kids writing from pictures as well, as a set up to general discussion about the picture? Of course, the list can be altered to fit your own writing goals.
Here is what Robert wrote to Allison and Diane today about using pictures:
Here is a link to a website that has many picture series. Often these are timely (the most recent one is of protests in India over the death of a rape victim there), of human interest (two recent ones deal with nomads in Mongolia and children born to women in prison in Argentina, respectively), general interest (2012 in pictures), nature (“Let it snow” and “Best nature pictures of 2012?), etc. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ I use pictures from here regularly; they are certainly not the typical textbook picture. You can do a search or browse by category.
Just as an example, I browsed “sports”. The following series came up:
- Motor sports (2 series)
- Pigeon racing
- Paralympics 2012
- London Olympics (6 series)
- Tour de France (2 series) Euro 2012 soccer (2 series)
- Ice skating
- 2012 Winter Youth Olympics
- And much more
Here is that modified list of cue words shared here by both Robert and Bob Patrick that could be used at the beginning of a class where there is nothing but a picture up on the LCD to start class:
- who?
- what?
- where?
- when?
- what happens?
- what is the problem?
- what happens?
- how is it resolved?
Of course, discussions around a picture are going to flow a lot better at levels three and above, but, with a little establishing of meaning of key terms to start the class, just as we do in Step 1 of PQA, we should be able to make it work at least at level 2. It’s probably not something that will work in a level one class unless you have a bunch of rockers, and that only in the second semester. Unless you go slowly enough.