BP6_2009112_Flickr

Flickr

As an educator, I am always on the lookout for creative ways to teach different concepts, units or lessons. As a Language Arts teacher, I am constantly on the lookout for lessons, ideas or activities that will inspire, or at the very least interest, my students in writing.

Flickr offers numerous opportunities to help get writing lessons underway, but I am going to focus on one lesson in particular that caught my attention. The lesson I am interested in came from Interface Magazine (2009). The lesson is called Five Card Flickr Story.

The template for Five Card Flickr Story is found at http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/flickr.php. When you arrive at this site, the site will deal you five random pictures. Either the teacher or the students select one of those pictures. The process is then repeated four more times until there is a total of five pictures. Once the pictures are selected, the students create a story that links the five pictures together.

What I like about this lesson is that it:

1. Requires the students to infer meaning from the pictures.
2. Entails critical thinking because the students must figure out how to link the photos together.
3. Engages the students through images and choice.
4. Allows for differentiation. Depending on the writing level of the students, the story could be set up like a children’s book, the story could be several paragraphs, or the story could be written in chapters.

This activity works best if you have a projector hooked up to a computer in the classroom or an interactive whiteboard. I cannot wait to try this with my students.

References

Five Card Story. (2009). Five Card Flickr. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/index.php

Interface. (2009). Lesson plan 42: Five card Flickr story. Interfaceonline. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/downloads/INTERFACE%20Lesson%20Plan%2042%20-%20Five%20Card%20Flickr%20Story.pdf