For the month of March, each day I am writing and posting a slice of my life, hosted by Two Writing Teachers.
March Slice of Life Challenge Day 15:
Picture Prompts
Picture Prompts
One of the best parts of my job is that I get to service ninth and tenth grade students who need more opportunities to develop literacy skills beyond their core high school courses. Writing is often an area that many of my students have not experienced a lot of success with yet, so I try to provide students with as many low-risk writing opportunities as I can.
As I was paging through Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's Poems are Teachers this week, I was reminded of the technique called Jotting from a Photograph. The Learning Network of The New York Times regularly publishes Picture Prompts, so using the New York Times Picture Prompts: Walking Down the Street, my class and I wrote based on the image (see below).
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| "Walking Down the Street" |
Since my students were new to the technique, we began by making lists first. Using VanDerwater's suggestion, I instructed students to make columns with the headings, "What I See/What I Think...Wonder....Feel" first.
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| My columns and lists |
After students jotted down ideas for each column, they used turn and talk to generate more thinking, and I invited them to add to their lists following partner conversations. Finally, I invited students to write for three minutes based on the image. Students had the option to write based on their lists, answering the question from the prompt, a poem or story, or whatever came to their minds as they wrote.
I've found that many of my students are paralyzed to even try to write a few sentences. After all, for so long they have been given the message that they are always doing it wrong. This is the joy of low-risk writing like this - you can't do it wrong. You just need to show up as a writer.
As I wrote with my students and listened to their smart discussions and read their insightful writing, I wrote this free verse poem using the document camera:
Among people,
she is an orb-
glowing in curiosity,
connection.
Thriving.
Yet, as time passes
she becomes inundated
by noise and stimulation.
She retreats -
sliding below
humanity.
Her halo
plummets.
She is ash.
This is a wonderful lesson. The NYT LN is a treasure. Love the image. It makes me sad that students get such negative messages about their writing when all we need to do is make writing low risk. I wish I’d been in your class to write. I think I’ll save this image for use after spring break. My diol honored will love it.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know they did picture prompts, too! I have used "What's going on in this picture?" to teach inferences the last couple years. I will have to look into this resource, too. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThe picture you chose seems like an excellent nudge for writing. I had some thoughts when I looked at the picture, then I read your poem and returned to the picture with different perspective.
ReplyDeleteGreat lesson - thanks for sharing it. I recently transformed my reading instruction for my high-risk learners; writing is my next focus & this feels like exactly the kind of thing I would like to do. Love the NYTimes LN - such a great resource - and love that you wrote in front of your students. Thanks again for sharing this.
ReplyDeleteLove that you're providing low-risk writing opportunities for your students. And that you wrote with them on the document camera. That takes a special kind of courage.
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