Students tape the photo they've chosen onto a blank notebook page (I have double-sided tape available for them). Then, they spend 15 minutes free-writing about the image. I don't want them to necessarily simply tell me what's in their photo; I'd much rather have them show a memory or idea they associate with the image. To show them that kind of thinking, I share with them two photos and free writes from my own writer's notebook. They are below.
Click here or on the image to view this page in larger form.
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Click here or on the image to view this page in larger form.
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Sharing/Talking/Planning Future Writing:
The purpose of a writer's notebook is to provide a space for students to capture smaller ideas that may become bigger pieces of writing someday. In my classroom writer's workshop, I expect my students to always select ideas that began in their notebooks (as pre-writes) as inspiration for their rough drafts.
Once students have captured some initial thinking on a page in their writer's notebooks about any photos, they can be easily encouraged to turn that writing into a longer draft. Photos can inspire any type of writing: narrative/memoir, expository, persuasive, poetry. Whichever genre they are encouraged to go with, encourage them to include the most important thought they captured when writing about the photo for the first time in the notebook.
An Invitation to Share Students' Photo Memory Pages:
You will have students who create awesome notebook pages inspired by this activity--ones that should serve as models for future students who go through this writing activity. I hope you'll consider photographing and sharing any students' notebook page that really are inspirational. Tell your students you're going to choose the three best notebook pages and post them at WritingFix's Ning; this is a fabulous way to motivate your writers, and your students could very easily have their pages seen by the tens-of-thousands of teachers and writers who visit our site annually.
The link in below will take you to our posting page specifically set up for this lesson. And hey, I'd love to see teachers sharing their own models of this assignment too!
Click here to visit our ning's posting page,
where you can post photographs of student notebook pages.
