3.+What's+in+a+Picture?

//**3. What's in a Picture - Pre-Reading or Initiating Strategy**//

Rationale: · I chose this particular literacy strategy because it helps my students develop better reading and writing skills. Typically 8th grade students have a difficult time using descriptive words and details. This lesson called What’s in a Picture helps students expand on their visual literacy skills. It activates their prior knowledge and experiences and bridges this to new content. Photography has a way of presenting the familiar in a different format. It helps tap into students’ insights and imaginations. We call it “Show Don’t Tell” lessons. I explain we want their writing to contain lively, sensory type details, rather than what we call dead (non-active) verbs. This lesson helps them write and understand why it is important to be descriptive.

Courses in which it could be implemented: · This lesson could be used in any grade really. For instance, you can show any grade level of student photographs to help them improve their visual literacy skills. Students really enjoy it too. I did this with the beautiful artistic photographs that we never have time to talk about in the literature book. There are wonderful drawings that are connected to the short stories we read in their basal, but we do not have time to really discuss and relate to them. Therefore I used these as a way to improve their writing and visual literacy skills. · I also think various teachers of science and history could use photographs to connect to their content. A science teacher could use photos in the science book to have students predict what the image is or what is going on in the picture which would connect to science concepts being taught. On page 102 of the Stephens and Brown book a science teacher used this What’s in a Picture Reading Strategy introduce the lesson on cells and their division. She uses slides and has students speculate what is in the slides.
 * We love the visual literacy component of this strategy!**

Procedure: 1. I use the students’ literature book which has artistic drawings and pictures with each short story. I pick out page numbers for students of pictures of stories we have read so they have a connection to the pictures from the story.

2. I break the students up into groups of 3 or 4. Students view the images and try to determine as they discuss together in their groups what they are and what the artist is trying to depict.

3. Students complete a response guide in their journals. (I use a response guide similar to the one on page 102, Figure 5.11, in __A Handbook of Content Literacy Strategies__, 125 Practical reading and writing ideas by Elaine C. Stephens and Jean E. Brown. 

Diversity: ·  Students who are visual learners use What’s in a Picture Reading Strategy very well. These kinesthetic learners do well when they can see something and then write about it. Most any learner whether a struggling student or an accelerated student can benefit because it helps develop their visual literacy and imagination and it increases their ability to use more detailed language in their writing.

Potential Issues: · At one point when I was trying to devise a good lesson with this picture idea I wondered where I could get very colorful and imaginative photographs for students to use. Right under my nose is our Basal __Language in Literature__ book which has the artistic work already their for me. Since I didn’t have time to talk about or even acknowledge the pictures during the reading lesson of the short stories and doing the associated work with, this handled both issues. Not only do we get to admire and discuss the pictures and how they connect to the story, we also get to view them and write about them to help develop our writing skills. I didn’t have any problems. The only issue is the struggling learners in my Language Arts class does not use the same Basal so they aren’t familiar with the stories that are connected to the pictures. Their own Basal is very small and doesn’t have the artistic work in them. Another issue was how to record the information. I’ve used journals, but I like the Response Guide on page 102 of Stephens and Brown and I’ll use this from now on.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(112, 48, 160); font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">References (Bibliography Information & Cross reference the Resource Binder) <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Stephens, E., & Brown, J. (2005). A handbook of content literacy strategies. In A framework for Content Literacy Instruction. //Strategies for Initiating// (pp. 101, 102). Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">McDougall Littell. (2002). Language of literature. Evanston, IL: Houghton-Mifflin Company.