Paragraphs from Pictures
While tutoring or teaching we try to make things stick for our student. Finding ways for lessons to sink in is often the hardest part of preparation. Utilizing a student’s creativity is one method to help the lesson stick.
Sometimes, while writing, we get into the habit of simply re-writing what we read or are told to write. We often overlook using creativity in writing. We either are trying to write too quickly, or have no room to be creative in the assignment. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to help students be excited about writing from the beginning by letting them use their creativity? Paragraphs From Pictures is a book that helps tutors do just that. It can also help a student begin to write paragraphs.
Paragraphs From Pictures is a workbook that gives a student the ability to make up their own story and then write about it. The book starts each section with a picture. It then asks a number of questions about that picture. The student writes the answers to the questions in sentence format. Then the student can combine all of their answers to create a paragraph. Alternatively, tutors can use this book to help their students be creative. After answering the questions, the student can make up a story about the picture based on what they learned from the questions.
Paragraphs From Pictures can be found in the Project Read Office.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Oh, this is our favorite! My student is SOO creative…under certain conditions:) It’s really interesting. He, like all of us, has a very hard time being creative when he has too much freedom. As the saying goes, “Creativity loves constraints.” When I bring a prompt (usually a fun object like a homemade painting, a little widget of some sort from my closet or desk, or some paperweight, statuette, or random item from say a thrift store) and give him some questions to consider about the object, his mind is just set free! For example, I brought an impressionistic picture that my friend painted, and I asked him to write three different main ideas for a story about what he saw in the painting. The trick was that we discussed it first and I suggested some really outlandish ideas for what it might be a picture of and what it was about. Then we turned the painting upside down and did the same thing again. His thinker-tool quickly caught on to the idea that he didn’t have to say any specific thing that I was looking for. He was free to interpret the painting as he pleased. This made for a fun and memorable activity. Also, one time I brought him a statuette (one of those awesome little Willow Tree statues) and asked him to tell me about the people in the statue. I invited him to tell me about their background, what they liked, what they disliked, why they looked the way the looked, etc. Then I told him what the statuette meant to me specifically. These types of activities are a good contrast for my student to see that some things are set, like grammar rules, to help us write things comprehensibly. Other things are open to interpretation and SHOULD be interpreted in an individual way. Of course, if you are William Faulkner, grammar also seems to be open to personal interpretation or adaptation.