It's December! For many of you, that means you're getting ready to move into Unit 5 of the IEW syllabus: Writing from Pictures.
If you're looking for some fresh ideas to ignite your students' imaginations and inspire their writing, a great place to look is Flickr's Creative Commons. Through Creative Commons, photographers give permission for their photos to be shared and distributed, which means that you can freely make use of them in your home or classroom.
Here's what to do:
1) Go to www.flickr.com/search
2) Enter a search term (such as tiger or spelunking).
3) When the results appear, click the arrow by Any license near the top, and choose All creative commons.
4) Pick three pictures that could tell a story.
A series of exciting photos is bound to spark ideas for students' compositions! Do you think your students could craft a storyline from the three pictures below?
And if you're shy on time to go photo-hunting, IEW also has a great ready-made resource—the Writing Source Packet—with sets of entertaining drawings that your students can use in their Unit 5 writing.
Enjoy this creative time, as your students begin to move toward crafting compositions based on their imaginations with a little spark from the pictures you choose. It's so much fun to see which direction their compositions will go!
If you're looking for more guidance on teaching Unit 5 to your students, sign up for Andrew Pudewa's December 7 webinar, Unit 5: Writing from Pictures.
