Writing+-+visual+literacy+2

Visual literacy
Last week I used another Lyn Watts photo to brainstorm some useful language and encourage writing ideas. This time I used a picture of a giraffe licking a squirrel. Of course the kids had never seen a squirrel so that encouraged a lot of discussion! This time it worked so much better! Even though I've done this writing lesson so many times now it seems to get better every time! The children are starting to use the words on the board to create interesting sentences - although surprisingly enough my top writers are not grasping the idea of using adjectives very well... I have to constantly encourage them to paint me a picture with their sentence. I close my eyes and have them read to me and I tell them what I can see in my head (exaggerated most of the time to get my point across) and then they try to add some more descriptive words to their sentence to paint a clearer picture.

I'm really enjoying beginning our writing with visual literacy, I have found that using talking buddies has helped a lot by allowing every child to brainstorm words they think of rather than asking one student at a time, and it keeps them all interested at all times because their constantly involved.

This time I had Paula and Tracey in with me so it was much easier to get around to everyone with 3 adults in the room!

My only issue at the moment is that I can't see that the lessons are working for each child as I don't lock them into writing about the picture - they can write about anything they like. However the idea of adjectives isn't yet creeping into their own personal writing so I end up with half the class writing beautifully descriptive sentences on our picture and the other half writing as they normally would because we haven't brainstormed words on their personal topic... I suppose that will all come with time...

Looking forward to my next lesson!!!