Digital Picture Books

It is important for the students to be able to reflect on their experiences. One way we help them do this is through the use of digital pictures. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we always take the digital camera along. Teachers and students take pictures that will help remind them about their experience.

The students are able to use the pictures in their journals. The students are encouraged to write about their experiences as they are captured in the photograph. In the beginning of the year, we helped the students get to know one another by having them bring in three things that would help to describe them. A picture was taken of the student and one of their favorite things. Then the pictures were printed out, and the students glued them into their journal and wrote about that favorite thing: what is is, why it is their favorite thing, and what they like to do with it.

Not only do the students use the pictures in their journals, but they enjoy making little picture books out of them. Numerous copies of the pictures are made, and the students get to choose 5-6 pictures to write about. They first make a booklet out of construction paper. Then, they glue a picture on each page. Next, they are required to write about what is in the picture. Once they have captions for each picture, they can decorate the booklet.

The students made three digital picture books. The first one helped to describe the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly. The second book revisited our Walk Around Keego Harbor. In each of the pictures, the students had to tell what shape or shapes are in the picture, and then tell what the picture is of. Finally, the third book is about our Community Bus Tour. The students could choose form pictures that showed our stops at the fire station adn the Distance Learning Center. The students looked for pictures of themselves or their friends when we were at the Distance Learning Center to write about.

The digital picture books allow for authentic assessment. As teachers, we can look at what the students wrote about to observe language development as it can be transferred into written expression. We can also look for spelling patterns, punctuation, grammar and sentence structure as part of the written expression.