Monday Motivator #20 2023-24

 

Picture of the Week

“Mrs. Parks, can you take a picture?” is a common question that I hear throughout the day. For better or worse, my smartphone and iPad camera have become an extension of my teaching. I take pictures throughout the day as a means to celebrate and document the thinking and connections that take place in our classroom. However, because snapping pictures is so easy on a digital device, I find I have too many, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the photos building up on my photo roll.  
When we were in Zoom school, the issue continued as I used screenshots to capture and document. I wanted to share the pictures with students and their families to give them a glimpse into the fun that takes place in a day of first grade. But I wanted to do it in a way that was meaningful and not overwhelming, for them or for us. At the time, my technology skills were expanding rapidly, and the pictures were a great way to practice them. During Zoom school our class-authored books were built on Google Slides, and I decided our pictures could be saved in a slides presentation as well. I called it “Picture(s) of the Week.” I shared the link with students to keep on their device and with parents in my weekly email. The value was clear, and “Picture(s) of the Week,” as a class big book, is part of our in-person class this year.
Picture(s) of the week is just that . . . At the end of the week we choose a photo, or a few, to highlight. We put the photo in the book, write a caption, and add the date. Each week gets only one page, so we have to be thoughtful about how to use the space. On Friday as we decide what to add, we review the book, the pictures, and the words. At the start of the year I model this routine and then quickly move the process to an interactive writing (and reading!) exercise. Finally, as  the year goes on, the task is given to the student who has the “historian” job on our class job chart.
Although this exercise was created as a way to share the pictures with our classroom community, to give parents a glimpse into our class, there have been many benefits:
Reflection and documentation: Choosing the picture(s) gives us time to reflect on the week, and rereading the book each week gives us time to reflect on the year. Documenting our learning and experiences solidifies our new understandings.
Literacy skills: Students are reading, writing, and talking about our week and the picture(s) we choose. It’s building their reading, writing, and speaking skills and also building understanding of nonfiction text features that we use in the book (such as captions, headings, and bold words).
Community: This book helps us remember together our experiences as a class. When rereading it, we see how far we’ve come, the learning we’ve participated in, and the community that has been built. We laugh and ooh and aah at the pictures and feel closer to each other.
Engagement: Students are looking out for happenings and what to document throughout a week in our class.
Writing inspiration: We reach for this book if a student is looking for a topic to write about during writing workshop. We use the pictures and experiences to inspire narrative and nonfiction—even opinion pieces sometimes!
Some weeks it is hard to choose just a few pictures, and other weeks we realize we have few to choose from. During Zoom school this digital book was a time capsule and a place for my students to remember, document, and communicate. But every year can be a time capsule, and as we build it together, we are building valuable real-life literacy skills.
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/picture-of-the-week/