Blog Post #3 - Images in the Classroom

    Images can be a powerful way to understand someone, especially a child, and help expand their critical thinking skills. Images and visuals can be thought-provoking in various ways based on a person's personal experiences, perspective, and imagination. They can be very beneficial to use in a classroom with students to evoke certain feelings and/or thoughts about a topic. Here are three ways I use images in my classroom and how I teach students to identify their deeper meaning.

1. Use Images as Conversation Starters

Resource: https://waldencroft.com/leadership-and-the-art-of-perspective-taking/

     The image above is one of my favorites to use with my students during Morning Meeting as we discuss as a class what this image is meant to teach us. Students generate a variety of answers which later leads us to our deeper discussion about the ultimate lesson - Just because you are right, does not mean I'm wrong. You just haven't seen life from my side. By using images in lieu of read-alouds, discussions about specific topics, such as learning to have conversations when there are disagreements, can happen just as easily. As a teacher, I can later reference the photo for students when a situation that relates occurs. Images are great for conversation starters.

2. Use Images as Writing Prompts

 Resource: https://www.imagineforest.com/blog/picture-writing-prompts/

    I also use images for creative writing experiences. In my classroom, students create a story based on what they see in the photo and how it makes them feel. I have used these two photos with my students before. For the left picture, I prompt students' thinking by asking the following questions - Is this book magical? Why is this book on the floor? What secrets does this book contain? For the right picture, I prompt students' thinking by asking the following questions - Who does this cabin belong to? When was this picture taken? What could be happening inside? Students then have 15-20 minutes to write a story and can later have an opportunity to share it with their peers. Creative writing is great for expanding the imagination!

3. Use Images to Teach About Puns

    Lastly, comic-like images like this one help teach students about wordplay and puns. I use this image to teach my students how the creator used the word Caribou (the name of the animal) in place of the phrase care about for wordplay. I think this is a fun way to incorporate vocabulary exercises. I'm such a sucker for "Dad Jokes" so my students are pretty good about fake laughing to make me feel good 😂 I also love challenging students to create a wordplay image on their own. This helps me to evaluate their understanding of words and how we use them in different types of settings. I love finding new ways to incorporate images into my daily lessons. There are so many benefits, such as better engagement, which can lead students to develop deeper connections.

    Thankfully, there are so many apps and websites available to help create images for the classroom. The one I used to create my Infographic assignment was easel.ly and for the Cartoon assignment, I used storyboardthat.com. I feel like the first one was harder to navigate and I wanted to use more items that were unfortunately located in their purchased Pro section, so I was limited. The second one was easier to use and I like that there was a lot of variety to make sure I could be inclusive and represent my entire classroom. The only downfall is that you are limited to the number of boards you can have in a week for free. The new app that I tried from the book was Doodle Buddy. This drawing app was easy to manage and is age appropriate for my students. There were stencils to help make simple shapes, stamps to use, and you can draw on inserted pictures. The only thing I didn't like was the advertisements at the bottom were close to the navigation bar so I accidentally clicked on them a few times. Not sure if it would be worth purchasing the ad-free option? I think overall, students would enjoy learning about and using these websites and app for visual literacy assignments.