A Picture is Worth...
...at least 40 words in this brainstorming exercise
Photo from The Atlantic’s Top 25 News Photos of 2022; vehicles resting on a bridge in Frick Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania following its collapse on January 28, 2022.
Images, such as the one above, can evoke a lot of emotion and descriptive words. (I imagine that this one could carry your students into a dystopian setting within their minds.) Today I’ve got a brainstorming exercise to help your students practice their parts of speech skills and explore their creative writing potential, all using a picture as a jumping off point.
I’ve made this pretty generic so you can use it over and over with your kids, using different photos for inspiration. Your first step will be to find a photo you want to use as a jumping off point for your kids. You could come up with one photo the whole class can use, or give a different photo to each group or each student and see where they go with it.
A quick Google search of “Top photos of 2022” will yield lots of results for you. You can also use famous art pieces!
Once you’ve got a photo, project it (or provide it to kids another way) so they can take a close look at it. Have them fill in the page with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions they associate with the photo. I’ve made them come up with 40 words in an attempt to have them stretch themselves a bit and get a little creative in their word choices.
Next, I’ve got instructions for students to write a fictional story, inspired by the photo, using 45% of the words they brainstormed. Why 45%? Because I thought mixing in some random math would be fun. (Spoiler alert, 45% of 40 words is 18 words.)
And there you have it! A little grammar practice, a little creative writing. You can end it here, or have students revise and improve these stories if you want to add in a little revising and editing practice.
No newsletter next week, as I’ll be taking my own little Spring Break. May yours be awesome, whenever it is!
-Jonda