[Lesson Plans Banner]

Adding "Snap" to Language Arts

Marti Westover Schutz
Robinson Elementary School, Monroe, Louisiana

Subject: Language Arts/Writing
Grade: 1

"The novelty of using the camera created instant enthusiasm for the project. The enthusiasm endured because everyone was so involved and everyone experienced success in all phases of the project."

Purpose and Description of Project

Marti Schutz's first graders took photographs of themselves, animals, and objects and used these photos as springboards for writing stories, plays, photo captions, comic strips, ads for products, and greeting card messages. "Children who were convinced that they didn't know how" to write creatively became accomplished authors and, as a result, gained confidence and self worth.

Among the language skills the youngsters acquired or strengthened were recognizing main ideas, cause and effect, reality and fantasy, and synonyms and antonyms; sequencing; predicting outcomes; drawing conclusions; and relating reading to illustrations, according to Schutz. The children also took pride in the photographic skills they developed, adds Schutz, and "were especially thrilled when the third grade classes visited the room and complimented them on the work." She noted that an extremely quiet child "produced an amazing flow of chatter for her puppet and another who had not spoken in complete sentences for most of the year became our favorite puppeteer."

Activities

Schutz first introduced the children to the camera and accessories such as flash, cable release, tripod, and various lenses. An amateur photographer visited the class to demonstrate how the equipment worked and allowed the children to practice.

Writing activities began by having the children look through books to get ideas for story titles and choose six they wanted to illustrate. The youngsters made some props themselves and brought others from home. They studied photos Schutz brought in for discussions of focus and composition. The class was sorted into committees to set up the shots and take the pictures to suit such titles as "The Frog and the Elf" and "Mardi Gras." In the process, they also tried out different lenses and decided that the telephoto lens worked best for their purposes.

With photos and titles in hand, the children then spent about two weeks writing stories to match. The children's stories on each topic were gathered into booklets, with the motivating picture and title on the front. The booklets were available on the activity table for the children to read, and they were also allowed to read the stories to other classes. One of the stories was chosen as the basis for a sequencing activity, with photos being taken for each main idea of the story and then mounted on the magnetic board in sequence as the story was retold.

According to the teacher, the children's favorite activity was "Puppets and Plays," in which they photographed each other posing with toys and other props, cut out the photos, and stapled them on craft sticks. Working in pairs, the children improvised dialogue for the puppets of their choice. The teacher wrote the dialogue on the board and had the children retell the story in the correct sequence. The children were "amazed that this game had resulted in the creation of a play," according to Schutz. The children then decided on titles for these plays, and the teacher typed some of them and displayed them in folders with the photo-puppets.

In other exercises, the children used photos left over from their earlier projects to create a "That's Incredible" photo montage of fantasy scenes, such as a boy in a large boot and children reading to bears, and then wrote stories based on these creations. They took additional photos, wrote group stories, and independently wrote math problems based on these "Math Monsters." Again using leftover photos, they developed a rebus story tying together several unrelated shots. They also studied advertisements and turned them into "Bloopers" by substituting opposite words for such frequent advertising terms as "good," "soft," and "clean"; wrote their own ads and bloopers to go with photos they took of such products as mouthwash; and developed displays of antonyms.

Among their final activities, the children took photos of themselves and wrote messages to create Mother's Day cards; practiced turning some of their stories into plays and vice versa; and used cutout photos and speech balloons to make a comic book.

Materials, Resources, and Expenses

Among human resources were an amateur photographer, the school librarian who supplied reference books, the French teacher who was a resource on the Mardi Gras, and sixth graders who helped the children with spelling. Parents and older siblings also helped children who wanted to take puppets home to write stories about.

Equipment included the teacher's 35 mm camera, flash, cable release, tripod, and various lenses. She purchased nine rolls of color film, folders for booklets, construction paper, notebook paper, glue, flash batteries, markers, 8" x 10" envelopes, and craft sticks.

Outcomes and Adaptability

Schutz concluded that testing showed that her children had grown considerably in vocabulary and in their understanding of main ideas and sequencing. She also saw a noticeable improvement in daily reading grades and discovered in oral questioning that the students demonstrated "an amazing retention of the basics of photography." In addition, "with the photographs promoting a flow of ideas, the children realized they could write stories, plays, and more" and took great pride in their accomplishments.

The teacher believes that all the activities of her project "could be used in any first grade class and could be adapted for third and fourth grades too. Judging from the changes in behavior that I noted in my class, any child with a self-image problem (slow learner, handicapped, emotionally disturbed, extremely shy) would benefit from this project."

| More Lesson Plans | Digital Learning Center - Educators |