How to Use Photos to Teach Writing

A simple photograph can help unlock a world of writing.

Photos are everywhere, and with the digital age, it's even easier to find photographs depicting everything from wildlife to people to popular travel destinations. Photos themselves tell a story, so encouraging a budding writer to look at a photo and tell the story shown is a good way to encourage and teach writing. The writer focuses on details of the photo to get information for his story.

Instructions

1. Select a photo that has a good amount of detail, especially if you are writing a longer piece. The more detail in a picture, the more information you have to write about.

2. Give your students a list of topics to write about. This list should target things found in the picture, or ways to write about the photo. For example, you could ask students to write about the mood conveyed by the photo, the thoughts of the people or animals in the photo, what happened prior, during and after the picture was taken, and what caused a certain reaction captured in the photo.

3. Ask the students to write their answers to these questions in full sentences. Some photos may be more conducive to answering certain questions than others, but they should try to answer all questions to the best of their ability.

4. Combine the answers to the questions into a story. The students should have a story outline which tells what happened before, during and after the photo was taken, which will be the story line for their writing assignment. They should also have a description of the character or characters in the story and have a basic understanding of how they interact.

5. Assist your students in placing the concepts of the story in a logical order to complete the story. You may need to help them rearrange certain aspects to help the story flow more naturally and read less like a simple description of the photo. This can also serve as a lesson in editing a writing assignment.

Tips & Warnings

• Show your students how a picture can tell a story by showing them a comic strip with the captions covered up. See if they can tell the story without reading the written material.

• Avoid using a photo you took or a photo of people you know. This may skew how you write the story or what you write about, since you already know information about the situation depicted in the photo.

References

• Read Write Think: Using Picture Books to Teach Characterization in Writing Workshop

Resources

• BBC Teaching English: Picture Stories in the Communicative Classroom
• Superteacher Worksheets: Writing Worksheets