I recently read a quick article for teachers about how when writing an email out to parents, we literally have 15 seconds to grab their attention.
15 seconds to share the most concise summary of what we want parents to remember, because beyond that you will lose 80% of your audiences attention. I believe the same is very true with our students in the classroom, as I am sure many of can relate! For this reason, I have stopped sending my weekly emails on Fridays summarizing with a sentence or two per subject about what happened. I had many parents email me asking questions that were directly answered in those emails. I did my best to keep them short and sweet, but some weeks were longer than others. This year, I simply post to our SeeSaw account with PICTURES and short captions. My goal has been to post one picture per subject a week.
I also made sure to start using visuals for my ELA and math lessons. Chances are that students (even the most focused of the bunch!) zone out for a moment or two (or five...) and providing a source for them to look for reminders of the work going on helps them to gain independence and problem solve.
These visuals may be short typed out steps of what is going on, a reminder of the teaching point from the lesson, or an image that helps tie together the learning to what hopefully can be a visual cue. I have noticed this especially helpful with my ELA lessons. Usually our reading and writing lessons are ended with an open ended "off you go" and the expectation that they do the given skills taught in the mini lesson. My team and I have spent countless prep times discussing how much scaffolding our students need and how without a direct task not much happens after the "off you go". Providing directions via a visual image is a phenomenal way to scaffold for ALL students.
One of the things I love about our new math curriculum (we are in year two of piloting it), is that the directions to a problem ALWAYS state this exact phrase, "show your thinking in pictures, words, or numbers." I have noticed that the amount of times I ask students to show their thinking has drastically decreased but they are explicitly told that they can do it in a variety of ways and we taught them what each type of thinking could look like.
In "5 Smart Ways to Use Digital Images in the Classroom" (https://www.teachthought.com/technology/digital-images-classroom/), I found a strategy that immediately stood out to be as something I want to implement. It was about visual storytelling and using images to prompt thinking and writing. I was thinking about using it once a week in their "Free Write" section of their journal. When I give students open free write time, some kids immediately go off into their imagination and begin. Of course, however, some kids who are just as lost during this moment of pure control/choice as they are during a guided lesson. I would project the image, but also print off mini versions of it to glue onto the page and have them write below it.
Some of my favorite apps to use at the moment:
-SeeSaw: Students can take pictures of tangible work and add typed out/drawn annotations, images, and thinking. I have used this in science to take a picture of an experiment and label what is happening, as well as in reading to annotate their own writing.
-BookCreator: This allows students creativity in putting together and celebrate writing in all genres. We have used this to publish our informational writing (all about expert topics) and the kids LOVE it.
-PicCollage: A great way to show students how to search for images, caption them, and use them to help teach others. We used this for students to present research on a region of Michigan in Social Studies.
This image I pulled from Once Upon a Picture, recommended by classmate and immediately bookmarked it. I love the variety of pictures provided (realistic and fantasy) and could see myself using it during Morning Meeting discussions, as well as for fun writing prompts! I also love how the pictures have guiding questions to go along with them.
I like that you intently use pictures once a week in your classes. That takes time to plan a photo that is meaningful. I also love your photo from once upon a picture. That has so much in the photo that can be used in a class.
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