The theme of migration or immigration has been somewhat naturally suggested by the idea that my bilingual students fairly recently came to the USA and, if not, have surely heard stories of someone who recently came here. Therefore, the unit is titled "I Came, I Saw, I Wrote" to refer to the victorious Caesar's expression "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). Even though the unit builds on some background or contextual knowledge before working with visual materials, it is helpful and appropriate to approach a theme that is already familiar and understood or experienced by students, which for them is migration or immigration.
The readings that provide contextual knowledge are not very challenging so that students can relatively easily grasp the content and concentrate their attention on the assignment that asks them to construct a new meaning from a photograph. In the language arts block, we read a chapter from the book The Circuit by the Mexican writer Francisco Jimenez, who wrote about his experiences as the child of a migrant family. In addition to this reading, students examine photographs, and I read to them excerpts from the book A Migrant Family by Larry Dane Brimner, which features a difficult life of one migrant family in a camp near San Diego, California, in 1990s. For the social studies text I chose the book …If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island by Ellen Levine, which describes a long exhausting journey of the immigrants who came through New York Harbor from the 1880s until 1914, when World War I began and the great migrations ended. Because of its excellent photographic display, we also study the book Ellis Island: New Hope in a New Land by William Jay Jacobs. Finally, the science section begins with students watching a brilliant documentary film March of the Penguins, which shows immense hardships these amazing birds have to experience during their life cycle, a significant part of which involves migration. To profit from a concise presentation focused on the penguins' migration, students read a short non-fiction article "By the Left, Quick March: The Emperor Penguins Migration" by Steve Connor.
In the block of each discipline, after the teacher determines what students know about the subject from the text or a film through graphic organizers, such as a KWL chart (what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we Learned), they are offered several photographs for examination and further writing about one of those. (I purposefully chose to use accessible photo materials, most of which I found on the website http://memory.loc.gov, so that other teachers can easily tailor this unit to the needs of their students and incorporate any photographs they would find appropriate.)
I conduct a series of activities for my upper-grade students (grades 5 through 8), which are more complicated versions of the activities presented by the Mondo program. The Mondo Oral Language-Reading block focusing on working with a photograph consists of three sessions: Generating a Discussion, Recording Their Thoughts, and Returning to Their Thoughts. In the first session, students in a small group observe and talk about a photograph. The teacher prompts them to use interesting specific words about what they see in a photograph. He or she takes notes on students' ideas during this discussion to help remind the group of the ideas later. In the second session, students decide together which of their ideas to record (the teacher then may remind them of ideas discussed earlier) and repeat their ideas in a clear way before the teacher records them on chart paper. Note that the teacher has to record the sentences exactly as the students have formed them. Students then read back what has been written on chart paper. Finally, in the third session, students revisit their written text. The teacher explains that because their ideas have been recorded, they can now be read. She or he also models this process by reading their text. With the support of the teacher, students revise and edit the sentences. They are provided with many opportunities to reread their thoughts fluently. The program explains: "This sequence reinforces the students' understanding that their thoughts can be talked about, written about, and read about, thereby developing and reinforcing oral language and print concept development."
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Thus, the Mondo oral language program focuses on reading and the teacher's writing of the students' thoughts about an image. The sequence of activities in my unit is targeted at a creative interpretation of a photograph and asking the students to record it in a written form.
First, students in a small group observe and talk about a photograph. I prompt them with the Visual Thinking Strategies
questions: "What do you see?" and "What do you notice?" (Visual Thinking Strategies [VTS] is a school curriculum and teaching method that uses art to develop critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills. It engages learners in examination and meaning-making discussion of visual art. http://www.vtshome.org/pages/a-vts-discussion) I direct them to use specific words to explain what they see; for example, instead of saying "this thing" we come up with "a steering wheel" or "a chandelier." In their further independent writings students are encouraged to use as many specific, precise words as possible. Though this exercise is cognitively undemanding (easy) and context-embedded, students may find it difficult. In this case they are able to use each other or the teacher as resources. Even if their active vocabulary in their second language is somewhat limited, I want them to try using specific words in descriptions. As they talk, I record single words on which students later build their sentences. Scott Herndon and Kristin Dombek in their article "Conversations Beyond the Gallery" call this stage "the initial encounter."
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They urge teachers to provide students with ample time to notice an artwork's features, so they can list or name as many observable details as possible. I encourage students to be creative in what they choose to see, so that later they have a lot of various elements at their disposal on which to build their writing. The details they point out can range "from perspective, color, and texture to figures and their poses, positions, and spatial relationships to one another."
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As a group, we aim for many descriptive features, rather than focusing on one unequivocal description. We focus on and celebrate the "unending range of elements that can be noticed and commented on."
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This first session is similar to the first session in the Mondo oral language program because it requires students to look at a photograph. However, my students are asked to talk about only what they see, without providing any interpretations yet. And, considering the grade-level difference, I expect my students to be able to describe a photograph in a more detailed and precise way than elementary-school students.
In the following session, called "the liminal phase" by Herndon and Dombek, students encounter a range of possible interpretations and meanings: "The liminal phase is a threshold moment, when students find themselves between observation and interpretation."
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Students review the photograph. Then I ask them to think and to write for ten minutes a list of questions about what they noticed in it. Students' questions should treat a variety of things, from very simple questions about conspicuous details in a photograph to more complex ones about how the details in the piece relate to one another. Because the list of words generated in the previous session is displayed, it serves as a starting point for some questions. The liminal phase is the time to raise the issue of subjectivity in a photograph. I urge students to think about a photographer's point of view and consider the following questions: Why did the photographer choose to capture a certain detail? Why do we pay more attention to one thing and less to another? Does the photographer want us to see it right away and some other object later? Is there a reason behind this? If you were to take this photograph, would you take a different shot? With a different focus? Why? So that I as a teacher also have a chance to participate in the questioning exercise and probably supply some interesting ideas that students think deserve further developing, I write down both my students' and my own questions on chart paper (this visual support provides context-embedded clues and is of great help in the next stage of working on a photograph). Note that it is recommended by writing specialists to record the sentences exactly the same way the students have formed them. Students then read back what has been written on chart paper. Reading back is especially important if we want the students to improve their reading skills. They should be able to read back something that they told themselves to write a few moments ago. This exercise helps students begin to interpret a photograph on the basis of their questions. "By linking their observations to questions, the students find themselves working in two directions simultaneously: forward toward a complex final interpretation, and backward to their impressions in the initial encounter."
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"The liminal phase" in my unit is the moment when the purpose of these activities switches from observing and generating words about a photograph to interpreting its meaning through asking questions, unlike the Mondo second session in which students simply talk in sentences about the photograph. In both scenarios, however, the teacher records students' oral language and has them read it back to reinforce reading skills.
In the final stage, students develop a creative interpretation of a photograph. They look at the photograph again and with my support revise and edit their questions. Students should be able to read what they have written without problems. Then they are asked to write. But before I require them to write a piece, I employ one of the necessary ESL (English as a Second Language) strategies - modeling. Because I show them how to write the kind of piece I expect from them, the cognitively demanding task of creative interpretation becomes more manageable. I ask them to create a story (in one or two paragraphs), in which they do not mention the photograph. They pick up to three questions from the list generated in the previous session and use them to create a story that reflects their own experience of the photograph. Here students may write from the first person or from the perspective of a character in a photograph. They are constructing their own interpretations of a photograph involving their prior experience, knowledge, and emotions. The rubric for this final writing piece also requires students to apply metaphors, similes, and interesting descriptive and action words. After students finish writing, I ask each of them to read aloud their pieces. The following one or two sessions are spent on editing and revising the writing pieces and preparing them for a form of classroom publication. In an individual session with each student, I discuss the ways to rewrite the piece, paying close attention to choice of words, grammar, and writing conventions.
As a culminating activity, students set up a PowerPoint presentation containing the photographs we studied and students' writing pieces. When we show this presentation to their classmates (students who are native speakers of English in the mainstream classroom and who did not participate in the three-fold writing process of working on a photograph), my students read their writing aloud. This activity can become a great exercise for engaging non-bilingual students in the process of viewing photographs and reflecting on them before they listen to stories created by my bilingual students. This exercise is similar to the first session - the initial encounter - described in my unit, but it may also include the question: "What is going on?" inviting interpretation of the image by non-bilingual students who are seeing the photographs for the first time.
In the following sections, I provide descriptions of reading and photographic materials in the three disciplines that my unit covers: language arts, social studies, and science.