Resources

About the Event/Curriculum Ties:

During the “Where We Live” project, students will employ their literacy through photography skills to convey a visual message about their community to other classes Students will explore their own community through images and investigate prides and concerns. Students will examine images from other schools and present their findings as part of a "mystery game" during the videoconference event.

Pre-Videoconference Activities:

Exploring Community through Photography

• Define community.
  • As a class, discuss what the word “community” means (you may want to make a web chart and have students write their individual ideas on the board).
  • Using the web (or discussion) as a reference, create two lists with your students: 1) things about your community that students are proud of or like; and 2) things about your community that students are concerned with or dislike.
• What does our community look like?
  • Have students gather images that represent the items on the two lists your class created. You can have students take their own pictures or find images that represent their community (newspaper images, magazine clippings, advertisements, etc.)
  • Students should share these images with one another. You may want to create a wall collage of all the different images that represent your community.
• One image, one community:
  • Explain to students that, often times, photographers can only select one image to tell a story. The students’ job is to choose two images that they think best represent their community. One image should depict something students are most proud of; the other should depict something they are most concerned with.
  • Students should discuss the various messages that these images convey and be able to defend their selections. The class as a whole needs to agree on which images are selected.
• Attaching the verbal to the visual:
  • Have students collaboratively write a one to two paragraph description about their selected images. Make to include why the image represents a pride or concern.
  • Don’t forget to have students title the images.
  • Sharing your images: Email your class’s images (photos must be scanned) and descriptions so they can be posted on the website.
    

Defining “Community” Through Someone Else’s Images

• Examing the images.
  • You will receive mystery images from a secret partner school. Distribute copies of the selected images or display them for the class. As a large group, make a list of everything students observe in the photographs.
  • You may need to remind students to think about the “Five Essential Questions."
  • You may also need to remind students to think about photographic elements.
• What does this mean? Small Group Discussion
  • Your students have listed all the observations they could make by looking at the photograph. What does this mean?
  • Break students into small groups and have them discuss what they think their partner class is trying to say. Does this image represent a pride or a concern? Why? What do they think the title of this image may be?
• What does this mean? Putting it into words.
  • Have students share what they think the “message” is in each of the images.
  • As a class, write a collaborative 5-10 sentence stance description about each image. Is this an image of a pride or a concern? Why do you think so? Don’t forget to title each description!
• Mystery description:
  • As a class, write a 3-5 sentence mystery description for each "secret partner school" image your class receives. Mystery descriptions should give clues about the picture - - but make the tricky! That's part of the fun!
  • Email your mystery description and stance description to Heather.

Videoconference Outline

• Welcome
• Mystery Game! We'll play 6 rounds and each round will include:
  • Mystery Clues: One school will read their mystery clue aloud.
  • Small Group Discussion: Each school will discuss amongst themselves which picture they think is being described (you'll have about a minute!)
  • Reporting Out: We'll get the "report" from each school and find out who the mystery photographers are.
  • Investigation: The school who read their mystery clue will read their stance description and then, the school who took the picture will read their description. During this time, the other game players should be thinking about the similarities and differences between the two descriptions.
  • Large Group Discussion: We'll talk about similarities and differences between the descriptions.
  • Questioning: The school who wrote the stance description will ask their partner school a question.
• Wrap Up

All images copyright © Joan Klatchko