Volunteering: give it a whirl!

Tuxpi

42 Photo Effects and Picture Frames


Make your pictures more lively, apply fancy effects and create real eye-catchers with this collection of easy to use photo effects. The picture editor is browser based, very simple to use and all tools can be used either separately or be combined with each other.

(Tuxpi via Alexandra Francisco)

Picture This! Building Photo-Based Writing Skills

Materials

An interesting photograph, one per small group, mounted on a large sheet of paper, computers with Internet access, paper, pens or pencils, classroom board

Warm-Up

(Note to teachers: The following warm-up may be done as written before you have students look at our 6 Q’s feature, or may be used as an activity with any of the photos from the 6 Q’s collection. As a warm-up, however, we suggest using photos from other sources. See directions below.)

Gather a range of interesting photos so that you have a different photo for each small group of four to five in your class. Remove and keep the captions for each, and mount each in the center of a large sheet of paper.

These photos can come from anywhere except the “6 Q’s” feature. You might find them in books or magazines, on postcards, from The New York Times or in other news sources. The Times Lens blog is a particularly rich source of photojournalism. You may choose photos that are thematically similar, or photos that are completely different; the warm-up exercise will work to make students imagine “connections” either way. Mount each photo in the center of a large piece of paper so that there is room to write all around it.

Put students in groups and tell them that they will be doing what’s called a “text on text” exercise. Their job will be to write comments in the space around the photo, leaving room for others’ writing as well.

Write the following four “response choices” on the board to remind students of the kinds of things they should be writing in response to the photo they receive. Tell them they may do any or all of the following:

Make a personal connection to the photo (e.g., “Reminds me of when I visited the Empire State Building in third grade”).

Write a question the photo brings to mind (e.g., “Why can you see only the backs of people’s heads in this shot?”).

Write a detailed observation about the photo (e.g., “The color red is everywhere — the sun, one person’s shoes, and the flowers and curtains in the background”).

Make a guess as to what information the original caption of this photo imparted (e.g., “This looks like the dedication of a memorial to someone who died”).

Give the groups each a photo and three to five minutes to write. When each group finishes, have it pass the large paper with photo to another group, moving clockwise. When each group of students receive the new photo, they should add their comments to those already there. They can continue the work of adding personal connections, observations or questions, or respond to previous writing as if in “conversation” with the notes left by previous students.

Continue this way until all the groups in the room have seen and commented on all the photos. (Make sure each photo is returned to the group that had it originally, as part of the fun of this exercise is reading the responses to the original comments.) Ask the students to discuss how their relationship to the photos and their understanding of what each “says” deepened as they wrote and responded to what others wrote. How true do they find the saying, “A picture paints a thousand words”? Why?

Finally, read the captions you removed originally and have students guess which photo went with which caption.

Let students know that they will now be examining photographs from the Learning Network’s “6 Q’s About the News” feature, which highlights a range of Times stories with photographs that are timely, telling, funny, provocative, striking, beautiful or absurd. They will be using the same skills they practiced in this exercise to look at photos that document current events and trends.

Related

The “6 Q’s About the News” feature runs daily on The Learning Network blog and asks the classic questions journalists must answer in reporting the news: who, what, where, when, why and how. The photos are chosen so that a variety of news events is highlighted. Each asks students to both look for answers to questions in a related Times story and to connect the content of that story to their own lives.

Invite students to scroll through the feature, archived here, and answer the following questions after stopping to read a few.

Questions

For discussion and reading comprehension:

What kinds of photos interested you most? Why?

What kinds interested you least? Why?

What do you notice about the questions posed for each photo?

In general, which kinds of questions seem easy to answer, assuming you had access to the original article?

Which seem to require more than just finding the “right” answer in the text?

What examples of each kind of question can you find?

Activity 1: Standardized Test Practice

Many states have standardized tests that include picture prompts for writing. Often these tests ask that students describe what “story” the picture is telling, and students must then write a simple story that can include characters, a setting, a conflict and a conclusion.

To practice this, draw four columns on the classroom board and label them “Characters,” “Setting,” “Conflict” and “Conclusion.” Choose one photograph from the 6 Q’s archive for the class to work on as a whole, removing the six questions so that students see the image without context. Ask students to brainstorm ideas about who the people depicted in this photograph are (characters), where they are (setting), what conflicts might exist between them or in their environment (conflict) and ways that they might conclude these conflicts (conclusion). Write all the brainstormed ideas on the board and have students pick one item from each column and write a story that incorporates all four. You may wish to time students’ writing to better prepare them for the test.

Activity 2: Vocabulary Building

Choose one photograph from the 6 Q’s archive and ask one or two questions, like “How many animals do you see?” and “Where are they?” Then have students come up with two more questions about the photograph and have them ask their questions to a partner. Next have each pair choose their own photograph from the 6 Q’s archive and come up with questions for their new photographs. Have them ask each other the questions that they create and encourage them to keep the conversation going even after their initial questions have been answered.

This activity can be modified to become a writing lesson. Instead of pairing students to discuss the photographs, have students write descriptions of a photograph and then read their descriptions to the class or in pairs.

Use the photos to liven up a lesson about prepositional phrases showing location, like “in front of,” “behind,” “to the right of” and “to the left of.” Have each student choose a photo and describe the composition of the photograph either aloud or in writing using prepositional phrases showing location (“the girl is in front of the boy,” “the piano is to the left of the teacher”). You might want to ask all students to start from the left side of the photograph and move to the right, explaining everything that they see as they go, so that they do not miss any of the depicted persons or objects. For students who have already mastered the most basic prepositional phrases showing location, add less basic phrases like “in the distance,” “across from” and “in the foreground.”

Activity 3: Basic News Literacy and Point of View

Use the 6 Q’s archive as a starting point for examining a current event. Choose a photograph and have students read the article associated with it and answer the basic questions. Then have them complete the “Saying What’s Unsaid” handout, which asks them to draw comics-style speech or thought bubbles on the photograph to communicate something that the person or people (or even an object) in the photo might think or say, based on what they learned in the article.

Activity 4: Creative Writing

Have students use photographs as creative writing prompts. Students should scroll through the 6 Q’s archive and pick one photograph to use as a prompt for a story. Have them imagine an answer to one or more of the following questions to begin thinking about how the photograph might translate into a story:

What happened just before this photograph was taken?

How do the people in this photograph feel about each other?

Imagine someone else is looking at this photograph and remembering the day it was taken. How do they feel looking at this photo? Why?

What is happening outside the frame of this photograph?

Who is taking this photograph? How do they feel about what is going on?

What are the people in this photograph saying to each other?

Imagine that the day that this photograph was taken was the best or worst day in one of the depicted people’s lives. Why was this day so important to him or her?

Imagine that one of the people in this photograph feels guilty. Why?

Once students come up with an answer to one of the above questions for their chosen photograph, they will write from the perspective of one of the people in the photograph. Or, if they would rather, they can write from the perspective of someone who knows the people in the photograph, but is not depicted.

By SARAH KAVANAGH AND KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Other interesting stuff:

Marriage and the Monarchy: Lessons From the British Royal Family

12 Ways to Learn Vocabulary With The New York Times

(via Alexandra Francisco)

Stereotypes about France and frenchmen

We all want to be young

O filme 'We All Want to Be Young' é o resultado de diversos estudos realizados pela BOX1824 nos últimos 5 anos. A BOX1824 é uma empresa de pesquisa especializada em tendências de comportamento e consumo.

Nik Peachey's blogs - tips, resources & activities

Nik's Learning Technology Blog
Tips, resources and teaching materials to help EFL and ESL teachers use ICT and new technology

Nik's Daily English Activities
This site is for autonomous EFL & ESL learners. Here you can find simple online activities that you can do each day to help improve your English and digital literacy.

Web 2.0 for teachers
Written by Nik Peachey - Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
This document is intended as simple introduction to some free Web 2.0 type tools that can be used by teachers who are interested in using technology in language teaching.

English online resources

Learning English online

(Este é o resultado de uma pesquisa feita pelos formandos no decurso da acção de formação "E-portefólios no ensino do Inglês")

What makes me

This Australian website invites you to review the importance art has on your life by creating a cube of images, audio or video.

Music, painting, photography, dance, theatre, poetry, film, sculpture, ...

Create your cube! Click here!

Make your students think!

"Lateral thinking, creativity is a usable, learnable skill!"

Dr Edward de Bono

As propostas destes dois sites podem ser utlizadas facilmente nas aulas (guessing, speaking, miming, role playing, writing,..):
Analytical Puzzles and Problems
Brain Food

Make your website or blog talk for free!

ReadSpeaker oferece-nos a possibilidade de dar voz ao nosso blogue, permitindo aos nossos alunos ouvir o conteúdo que publicamos, ao mesmo tempo que o lêem.

A instalação desta aplicação é muito fácil. Basta aceder, fazer um sign up e seleccionar o tipo de conta que queremos (free, basic, pro). Depois deste passo, introduzimos a URL do nosso site/blog, seleccionamos  a voz (masculino ou feminino), escolhemos a língua  e adicionamos o plug-in.
Ao visitarmos o nosso blogue, verificamos que foi adicionado um wigdet à nossa barra lateral. Podemos alterar a sua posição, mas não devemos apagá-lo.

Para experimentar, cliquem aqui.