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Photographs for Process and Product: Language Experience Pages
Caroline K. Winkel
Clifton Avenue School Lakewood, New Jersey
Subject: Language Arts
Grade: K (Monolingual/Bilingual Remedial)
"The number of fingerprints, smudges, and dog-eared corners
on the Language Experience Pages may be the most valid measure
of their worth."
Purpose and Description of Project
Caroline Winkel used photographs of her kindergartners at work
and play to create Language Experience Pages (LEPs) that include
captions in the children's words, as dictated to the teacher in
the form and language most comfortable for the children. "These
personalized, illustrated texts were then used to motivate reading
and to present printed language to a bilingual group and a monolingual
one," explains Winkel.
The teacher stresses the importance of using a
camera
to immediately capture and retain the children's interest in the
activities being photographed so that they are eager to supply
captions. She also allowed the children to occasionally take photos
to be used on the sheets. The captions were color-coded according
to whether they were in English or Spanish, since most of her
students were Hispanic, with varying degrees of bilingual proficiency.
Winkel used the pages to supplement the core reading curriculum
and also made them available at all times for "choice reading."
She found that they, "were more inviting than other reading
material because a) they were authored by the children and b)
the illustrations were instant and literal in a way that only
photographs can be."
Activities
According to Winkel, the beauty of the project is that it is so
simple while also proving so effective in using the children's
interest in their own photographs and activities "to motivate
a positive attitude toward and interest in print." The basic
procedure is as follows:
- Photograph or have a child photograph a classroom scene or
event-children at work or play, at arrival or departure, during
routine activities or on a special occasion, candid or posed.
- Mount the photograph on a sheet of tagboard and ask an individual
child or a small group to comment on the picture so that the teacher
can use what they say to write a caption.
- Use the pages in reading exercises and have them available
for the children to browse through. Winkel says the photos stimulated
language use as the children developed the initial captions, later
provided the context in which to search for particular letters
and words, and continued to generate further language as they
were studied and discussed.
- Instructional activities based on the pages included word
attack/phonics skills, which called on the youngsters to identify
particular words, sounds, or letters; comprehension, which required
them to create alternative captions or group pages according to
different themes; and language development, which had the children
suggest additional events to photograph and discuss the photographic
process.
Materials, Resources, and Expenses
Winkel used her own camera and such school materials as
tagboard and masking tape to construct the pages.
Outcomes and Adaptability
Winkel says that of "the reading and reading-like behavior
demonstrated by my kindergartners were testimony to the effectiveness
of the LEPs in motivating a positive attitude toward print."
She notes that the children "pored over the loose pages during
playtime as well as during reading choice time" and that
''individual pupils, almost-readers as well as readers asked to
read pages to the whole class." She also found that the children
constructed ever-more-elaborate projects" with their blocks
and Tinker Toys in the expectation of being photographed.
The teacher also believes that the adaptability of LEPs is virtually
limitless. She advises that the pages can be used successfully
with any group of children who have had little exposure to print,
whether because of age, socioeconomic background, and/or learning
problems.