A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative

I used a modified version of this lesson in a coaching collaboration with a Spanish 1 teacher. We were interested in motivating kids to write, so we looked for photographs that relate to their current vocabulary content (in this case, food). I modeled what a story about eating breakfast might look like, finding ways to "write around" the words for which I didn't know the Spanish. Students then wrote their own stories based on photos of teens eating lunch or dinner. We added "point of view" to the list of things to consider since students needed to be aware of the different verb forms related to their subjects. We asked students to do planning in most categories (people, setting, situation) in English, but important vocabulary in Spanish. Then they wrote! Students will be sharing their stories with each other in an upcoming class.