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Online Lessons for all subjects
The Write Picture (below)
(Other Lewis Hine photographs from Eyewitness to History, and The History Place.)
The Write Picture
One
of my favorite lessons is a writing exercise I adapted to social studies, based
on a focusing lesson I learned while in the South Coast Writing Project at
U.C.S.B. This lesson is ideal to
use as a
culminating exercise in an instructional unit, although it can also be
effectively used as an introductory / anticipatory set activity.
For best results I would encourage all who use this lesson to write with
the students, and share your writings with them.
Purpose:
to expose students to creative writing-across-the-curriculum
to exercise student critical questioning and thinking
to elicit metacognative thinking and writing
to help students to identify personally and
emotionally with your subject’s personalities and events.
Materials:
Choose an interesting and thought-provoking
painting, drawing or photograph related to the unit you are teaching. Either have a slide, overhead, or Powerpoint slide to
project, or duplicate the visual for the students.
Each student needs paper and pencil/pen.
Procedures:
1.
Instruct the students to study the picture you chose.
Have them list every physical thing they see in the picture.
Take volunteers to read their lists to make sure everyone sees the same
details.
2.
Next tell them to choose
one of the people/objects to become in the picture.
This will be their “point of view.”
There is almost nothing off-limits
for them to become in this exercise.
3.
Tell them they will be writing from the point of view of the person or
item they chose, and give them the lead-in lines from below to guide their
writings:
I
see… I hear… I feel… I smell… I touch… I taste... I
am…
Allow
them approximately three minutes to write at least a sentence for each.
Other
possibilities of lead-ins are: I…hate, love, embrace, reject, fear, long for,
celebrate, ponder, wait for, applaud, attempt to, work for, dismiss, live for,
want, cannot, can, pray for, sense, predict, stand for, contemplate, strive for,
never, always, sometimes, might, should, would….
4.
When they are finished, have them share in groups of three by reading
aloud