8P24 Consolidation Task (Sample)

By Jessica Taylor Charland


“Ok Class, write me a story”…



Idea generation is a vital part of the writing process and is one of the traits of good writing. But it can be daunting staring at a blank page and trying to come up with a starting place for your writing. Powerful images can provide inspiration for students who struggle with idea generation. 


Using images in a classroom can also inspire creativity. Intriguing or comical pictures can add a fun element to writing to spark interest in the most reluctant writers. Serious photos of current or historical events can trigger strong emotions that allow students to play with vivid language choices to describe them.


Finally, using images in the classroom is an important practice as we are all bombarded by images in the world around us. Understanding these images, inferring meaning from them, and using them to communicate our thoughts offers real-world learning opportunities for students.


Understanding these commons struggles and real-world interactions led me to my focus question:



The Grade 7 Language Curriculum in Ontario explains the skills that students need to develop through quality instruction. Noteworthy expectations today are: 

Students need to be able to generate ideas for writing in different forms

    •W1.2 – Generate ideas about more challenging topics (p.130)
    •W2.1 – Write complex texts in a variety of forms (p.131)

Students need to be able to use descriptive words in their writing to both communicate clearly and entice their readers

    •W2.3 – use vivid and/or figurative language in their writing; and identify the choices they     made and the effect it will have on the reader (p.131)

Students need to be able to infer meaning from images and media texts

    •M1.2 – Interpret complex media texts and images, using overt and implied messages as evidence for their interpretations (p.134)

So, What bold image resources might a 21st century Language teacher use to help address these media literacy and writing skills?



RESOURCE #1: 
Skool Aid Products “Writing Prompts” Photos and Stories

LINK:https://www.pinterest.ca/socalclift/writing-prompts/



DESCRIPTION: This Pinterest page houses many picture prompts that can be used with students. Unlike the NYT What’s Going On? Series, these images offer students a perspective to take and a narrative story prompt. This can be useful for students who’s inferencing skills are still developing and need that extra push towards the beginning idea formation for a piece of writing.

CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

In a grade 7 classroom, I could hook students into narrative writing by providing one of the picture prompts from Skool Aid’s Pinterest posters. Students would them generate ideas for their story (W1.2 & W2.1), write a quick draft, and share it with their peers. We could identify the elements in a story (plot, setting, characters, problem, climax, solution) and focus on the word choices they used (W2.3). 




RESOURCE #2:
New York Times Website – What is Going On In This Picture? Series

LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/column/learning-whats-going-on-in-this-picture 


DESCRIPTION: Every week, the New York Times posts an intriguing photo with the caption removed, and invites students to use their creativity and inferencing skills to write about what they think is going on in the image. This is a global writing opportunity to see what students around the world come up with! You can use the website as a platform to post, or just use the activity offline in your classroom.

But wait! There is so much more on this site!

There are so many resources on this NYT website! There are daily writing prompts in areas of current events, opinion, or photo-inspired – all targeted to kids and teens! There is also a writing competition series for high school students that breaks down the writing process of the winning entries each year! You have to spend time just seeing all this this site offers for the classroom!

Check out: https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/learning-writing-prompts

And: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/learning/our-2nd-annual-personal-narrative-writing-contest.html

And: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/learning/550-prompts-for-narrative-and-personal-writing.html

CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

After understanding the elements of a narrative, students could choose one of several images from the NYT Series. They would have to infer what is happening and write a narrative to share (W2.1, M1.2). These could be posted around the classroom, or on a shared digital document, and peers could offer alternative perspectives to these images, or draw conclusions about the different ways similar images were interpreted in story form (M1.5-POV). 

As an alternative to this idea, students could write stories prompted by the images they choose, and their peers would have to match the stories to the images. This would encourage student writers to use detailed vocabulary when writing their stories and enhance the quality of descriptive writing (W2.3). 


RESOURCE #3:
CommonSense.org - 4 lessons to integrate media literacy in the classroom (Lesson #3 and accompanying video example)



DESCRIPTION: One of the four lessons on this page asks grade 7 students to collaboratively create a Padlet that includes images of the 50’s t understand American History (I would change this to Canadian history in my classroom). They analyze images from advertisements and news articles, and write captions to demonstrate their opinions and findings, and to create a shared understanding. The accompanying video shows how meaningful this task was for students. In a classroom, I would adapt this lesson by having students use this collaborative curation of images to inspire a variety of writing topics from non-fictional pieces to historically accurate narratives. 

CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

Like the students in the video linked above, small groups of students could curate image resources (advertisements, news articles, etc.) on a given current event (covid-19, for example). Through gathering and interpreting a collection of resources together, they could use these perspectives to write a variety of forms - a news broadcast to educate their community, a blog post to relay shared experiences and coping tips, a personal narrative or a poem about a teen growing up in a pandemic, or an essay outlining any number of observations on human behaviour. (M1.2, M1.5, W1.2 & W2.1)


CONSOLIDATION/REFLECTION:
(NOT YET COMPLETE)



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