A really fun writing prompt idea that I found at a teacher blog called The Competitive Voice. I really liked this idea but found the whole project to be a really interesting and exciting way to engage students. It also really focuses on key writing, image analysis and critical thinking skills.
The project began with kids doing some Flicktion. If you don’t know about this, it’s the intersection of Flickr images and fiction (see the Flicktion images I have selected on my Flickr page at JOL). People post a starter sentence in the comments window of a Flickr image, and others continue the story through the addition of more comments. We didn’t do that, we simply showed this image (if you can’t get it at school, be sure to look at home-it’s heart-wrenching and one of the comments indicates that this person may have been a teacher) and had kids develop a story about the image. We did this to help them understand how to interpret a digital image to tell a story, a skill that will serve them well in the next part of the project. And we got great stuff.
A word of warning- don’t let your students wander around flickr freely. Like Google images if you look for it long enough you can find it. It being just about anything. flickr is a great and powerful resource but with the power comes the need for guidance and control. I think Yoda said that.
analysis critical thinking digital lit english fiction flickr images Other writing prompt