Final exams looming, pop-up Christmas parties sugaring the halls, kids ready for a break, and I’m looking for something light and fun that also develops students’ writing skills of observation, analysis, language, and image.
This lesson also helps students develop those “dig deeper” skills, mining a universal theme, which is discovered in this single moment in time. This lesson may also translate into something longer like a vignette or personal essay, but I encourage students to try to write in whatever short form of poetry they want for sharing.
Room Arrangement:
I pull desks into pairs, so students can share their writing when they are finished.
Materials:
Everyone will need two dice, their writing notebook, a pen or pencil, and their cell phone.
Grade Level:
Middle or High school
Time Limit:
You can do this as a 15-minute writing warm-up or expand it to 30 minutes with a time for sharing at the end.
Community Level: Low
This activity is not collaborative, but I do encourage students to share at the end with their partners. I also take volunteers to share to the entire class.
Accessibility Level: High
Anyone can do this activity. The activity does not require an immediate idea or inspiration, which sometimes can be a hurdle for students who don’t see themselves as creative. They are flexing their observation, selection of specific details, description, analyzing, and summarizing skills.
Directions:
Roll your dice. You can add the numbers or multiply them to get the number you will use to select your picture. For example, if you roll a 3 and a 4, you could use 7 or 12 as your selection number.
Open the photo app on your phone.
Using your selection number, count back to that picture.
You can either pick that picture or the one immediately in front of it or after it, so you have a choice of three pictures. Choose one.
Study the photo closely. What do you see in the background and foreground? What type of plants, people, animals, landscape, or structural features are in the picture? Is this a rural or urban setting? List as many physical details as you can in two minutes.
Step into the picture and experience the sensory details that might exist inside the picture. What smells or sounds would you encounter in this photo? What would you taste or feel in this picture? List as many sensory details as you can in two minutes.
Storify the picture. What is the relationship between the people in this picture? If this picture were a short story, who is the protagonist, the antagonist? If this picture were a novel, what is the plot, the sub-plot? If this picture were a movie, what is the genre? List as many story details as you can in two minutes.
Now think about the world outside this picture. Think about context. What do you imagine is happening just outside the frame of the picture, either physically or chronologically? What happened right before this photo was snapped? What happened right after it? Who is taking the photo? List as many context details as you can in two minutes.
Now that you have a whole page of notes on this picture, think of a single word that describes the “essence” of this picture. Write a poem with that word as its title about this picture.
Student’s Rating: 4 stars
They gave this generative lesson plan 4 out of 5 stars. They liked creating from a picture they owned, but they also said it would be neat if they had traded phones and looked at a picture that they didn’t know anything about and tried to “interpret” those pictures. They also liked it because everyone’s poems sounded different: some students told the story of the picture, while other students chose a more abstract, lyrical approach.