TARA KIVETT1S T GRADE

RAY CHILDERS ELEMENTARY

Literacy Through Photography Project: Exploring Colors and Emotions Through Pictures

RE 5130

Lesson Plan for Day 1

ObjectivesNCSCOS Social Studies Competency Goal

1.03- The learner will compare and contrast similarities and differences among individuals and families.

NCSCOS Language Arts Goal 4.04- The learner will engage in extended oral discussions

Day 1: Colors and Emotions

I read the book One by Kathryn Otoshi to my students which is about the color blue which is bullied by the color red. The book includes others colors in the story and I asked the students to look for the emotions or feelings that the colors stood for in the book. When I was finished reading the story we made a list of colors and the emotions that they felt they represented.

Here is the list: blue-sad, peaceful, calm; green- happy, sick, curious; black- sad, very mad; purple- important, very happy; yellow- happy, excited; red- angry, embarrassed, happy

This was the springboard for my first graders to begin thinking about what they would like to take a picture of on the playground. They would be finding an emotion in the color of an object and taking a picture of it.

Lesson Plan for Day 2

ObjectivesNCSCOS Competency Goal Social Studies

1.03- The learner will compare and contrast similarities and differences among individuals and families.

NCSCOS Competency Goal Language Arts 4.04- The learner will clarify purposes for engaging in communication.

Day 2: Framing and How to Use a Camera

I decided to use our violence intervention program called Second Step because it uses large cards with pictures for discussion that go along with lessons. I chose two pictures that had children in them. I held the first picture up that had a little girl in the middle sitting on grass pulling a piece of gum off of her shoe. In the background you can see a blacktop but she is the main focus. I asked the kids if they remembered the picture and they all did and responded with the fact that the little girl was upset that she had gotten gum on her shoe. I told them that now instead of focusing on her feelings and the little girl I wanted to focus on the photographer or the person who took the picture because they were getting ready to be photographers.

Day 2 continued

I asked them to look at the size of the girl in the photograph and talk to me about her size. They all said she looked big. We all shared how to make objects larger with a zoom button. I then asked them why they thought the little girl was in the middle of the picture and they responded with because that’s what the picture is about. I thought that was great. I linked this to what they would be doing by writing on chart paper the key points they had just made. I titled the chart paper photographers. I wrote down use zoom or get closer to objects to make them larger and focus on one thing to make it stand out. I explained to them that they should do this when they took their pictures too. We looked at the second picture of two little girls. One girl is skateboarding and the other little girl is standing with her arms crossed and not happy. I chose this picture because it has two subjects and I wanted them to see that it is still balanced. I asked them to talk about the size of the subjects or people this time. They said that the girls weren’t that big this time and I asked them why. After thinking for a minute they got the concept that it was because there were two of the girls in the picture and one student said “The photographer probably couldn’t get so close to them. He had to stay back”.

Day 2 Wrap Up

I added to my list if you’re taking a picture of something large or more than one thing you don’t always need to zoom in and may need to stay back. After making our list I showed the students the camera that they would be using and told them I would show them the zoom button that would allow them to make things larger like we had just discussed. They all went back to their seats and I put the camera under my document camera as I pointed out the basic parts of the camera: the on button, the shoot button, and the zoom button. Then the students all got a square with the middle cut out and practiced going around the room and framing an object. If they couldn’t get the object in their frame they knew they had to step back and if they couldn’t see the object in their frame they knew they had to “zoom in”. This was the link to our actual photographing.

Lesson Plan for Day 3

ObjectivesNCSCOS Competency Goal Guidance: 4.05-

The learner will develop skills in areas of interests.

NCSCOS Competency Goal Guidance: 4.03- The learner will demonstrate how to work cooperatively.

Day 3: Photography Day

Today my students went outside on the playground to take their pictures of something that was a particular color that they had chosen.

Some students took pictures of slides, trashbags, benches, others student’s shirts, and even grass. I noticed most students chose to move closer to the objects to do framing but twos student remembered how to zoom in and one got a good picture of the sky. Most of the students centered the objects in the middle of the screen on the camera and I only had to help two hold the camera because they weren’t able to see what they were trying to take a picture of on the screen. One of these was an ESL student who said she had never gotten to use a camera before. The whole process only took about 15 minutes and I was very surprised at how quickly it went by.

Lesson Plan for Day 4

ObjectivesNCSCOS Competency Goal Language Arts

4.05- The learner will write by using an author’s model of language (mine) and extending the model.

Day 4: Descriptive Writing

I printed off the pictures that the students had taken outside and told them that we would be using them to do a writing task today. I reminded them that we had talked about how certain colors make us think of feelings and referred back to our feelings chart that we had made together. I showed the students a picture of grass that I had taken. I told them I was going to show them an example of how to write about the picture in way that lets someone know how that picture makes me feel and that they could use my writing as a model much like we can use author’s books as a model for writing. I asked them what I took a picture of and they responded “Grass”. I wrote down “I took a picture of grass” for my first sentence. I then reminded them that we had talked about how important colors were in Kathryn Otoshi’s book and I needed to mention this so for my next sentence I wrote “The color was green”.

Day 4 continued

I explained that I needed to talk about how that color makes me feel and not only how it makes me feel but why because not everyone may feel the same way about green. I explained that green makes me feel peaceful because you can lie in grass so for my next sentence I wrote “Green makes me feel peaceful as if I am a child again lying in the soft grass watching the clouds”. I asked the kids to tell me the three things that I told them in my piece of writing and they said, 1) what I took a picture of 2) the color 3) how it makes me feel and why. I told my students I wanted them to use my model and tell me those same three things about their pictures and that they should glue their pictures to the top of their papers.

While students worked on their writing I walked around and if they were vague I asked a question that prompted them to give more information.

Lesson Plan for Day 5

ObjectivesNCSCOS Competency Goal Social Studies 4.06-

The learner will compose a variety of written products. (friendly letter)

NCSCOS Competency Goal Social Studies 5.06- The learner will self monitor composition by peer conferences.

Day 5- Friendly Letters

I had the kids recall the emotion that they wrote about when describing their picture from day four. Then they talked to a neighbor about a time that they felt that way. I shared my example first of feeling relaxed. I talked about feeling relaxed this summer when I went to the beach and walked along the shore at night and how I could feel the cool sand beneath my bare feet. I told them that there weren’t a lot of people out on the beach at night so it wasn’t noisy and all you could hear the waves gently crashing in the ocean. All that made me feel relaxed.

We reviewed the parts of a friendly letter: the greeting, the body, the closing, and signature. They all began to write their letters to me using what they had discussed with their partner. Students drew a picture to go along with their writing and shared it with a partner.

STUDENT DESCRIPTIVE WRITING AND FRIENDLY

LETTERS AS EVIDENCE OF STUDENT LEARNING

Student Photography

Photography/Description

Friendly Letter

Student 1

Evidence of Student Learning

Visual Literacy On our playground at this time of year the

grass is patchy in some places, particularly where we were taking pictures. When this student took her picture she chose an area that had as much grass as she could find and although she did not use the zoom button she did get pretty close to the clovers that she wanted in the pictures. As I watched her, I noticed that she dropped down on her knee and bent down so she could do the zooming in herself. She was very comfortable with the camera and knew where to push the button to shoot. She did not try to stand back and take a picture of everything and really had a firm grasp of framing. The only thing that could have made her picture better would have been to use the zoom button, but I think the picture works because she still got close enough so that her picture is mainly focused on the green clovers.

Writing This child is one of my lower readers

and writers. I have worked with her on consistent punctuation and capitalization and she has mainly used them consistently in this piece. According to my rubric she is a developing writing and she included a four leaf clover in both writing samples, although she didn’t have to do so in the friendly letter. This shows me that the project really interested her. When I asked her about her picture on the friendly letter she said the person in black was her sister and she was in the corner. I asked her why she was upside down and she said she wasn’t upside down, she was just getting down low to take a picture of the four leaf clovers. Since she drew a picture of herself taking the pictures I could conclude she really enjoyed the project and her writing reflected this.

Photography/Description

Friendly Letter

Student 2

Evidence of Student Learning

Visual Literacy This student had a bit more trouble with

the camera than most. When she got the camera she couldn’t see the dirt that she wanted to take a picture of. So I asked where she was pointing it and she realized that she wasn’t pointing it down toward the dirt. Once I finally got her “pointed in the right direction” literally she knelt down to get a picture of the dirt. She didn’t quite have the concept of framing what’s most important as the grass is in the middle of the picture but I was just happy that we got dirt in the picture after the first few attempts. I was actually surprised that this student didn’t have more experience with the camera because she comes from one of my more affluent families but I don’t think that she takes on much responsibility. I definitely see that it’s not too early to start teaching them these skills like photography. She was very happy once she got her picture and was satisfied so we kept the one that you see at the top of her writing.

Writing While writing this student got stuck on

orange makes me feel relaxed so I asked her why and she said it reminds her of an orange chair. I thought that it was interesting that she chose to compare the orange dirt to an orange chair. I wish that she had gone on to say why an orange chair is relaxing (comfy, watch tv, etc) but her main idea is there. In her friendly letter she chose to write about feeling relaxed in her room. She included the color of her bed and when she felt relaxed which was at night. I thought her ending was interesting “In my own room I sleep”. This sounds like a poem to me. She probably has no idea that her letter could probably be used as poetry but I was thinking that it could even be suited for shape poetry. According to my rubric I think that she has characteristics of an early developing and developing writer. Her punctuation and capitalization is consistent and her spelling is easily read but she does not include as many details for content purposes.

Photography/Description

Friendly Letter

Student 3

Evidence of Student Learning

Visual Learning This student was only one of two who

remembered how to zoom in on an object. As a result he got pretty close to the trashbag that he wanted to take a picture of without standing right up next to it. Also, the trashbag is in the middle of the picture so it is the main focus of the picture. He also asked me a lot of questions while taking it so I knew that he was really concerned with how it would come out. For example he said “Should I zoom in or step closer to it?” I also thought it was interesting that he chose the trashbag to take a picture of instead of a bench or a tshirt like other students in my class were doing. When I asked him why he said he liked it because “It was shiny and it flapped in the wind”. He seemed to very comfortable with taking pictures and I think he gets to do a lot of things independently at home because he has 6 siblings. Overall, I think he did a pretty good job with framing and using the zoom feature of the camera.

Writing This student used the model that I

provided well and related the black trashbag to being happy. This was unusual for me because normally I don’t think about black as being a happy color. However, I liked that he took what he had talked about in our first lesson and applied it. We had said that just because one person might see a color and feel a certain way doesn’t mean that you’ll feel the same way. In talking with him I asked him what made him think of haunted houses and he said the trashbag when the wind hit it kind of looked like a ghost and it made him remember that he liked haunted houses. I thought that was great and just another example of how this project brought out great connections. His friendly letter includes details of setting, sound, time, and consistent punctuation and capitalization. According to the rubric he would be a developing writer.

Plan for Publishing Student Work

I chose to put the student photographs along with writing samples outside my classroom in the hallway to be displayed. Parents frequently drop by and can easily see student work there. Other teachers have been wondering what we’re doing with the cameras and now see the finished products. The kids all feel a sense of pride to see their work published in the hallway. I have a banner called great work hangs out here. Work will stay up for two weeks.

THESE ARE THE GUIDELINES I USE THROUGHOUT THE 9 WEEKS TO ASSESS WRITING SAMPLES. THIS RUBRIC IS A

PART OF THE K-2 LITERACY ASSESSMENT BY NCDPI .

1ST GRADE WRITING RUBRIC FROM DPI

Rubric for Evaluating Student Work

PHOTOGRAPHY IS AN OUTLET AND MEANS OF OPENING UP MANY STUDENTS IN AN EFFORT TO

PROMOTE LITERACY.

Final Thought