Picture Module

This week in Reading/Language Arts we worked on many different skills. We tackled a little handwriting and worked on perfecting our ability to write our own names. We read many books to increase our knowledge of how books work and who creates them (authors and illustrators). We spent a great deal of time with rhyming words and their families. We even wrote stories about our houses and moving when a student shared they would be moving soon. Above it all, however, our favorite new thing was picture module.

Picture module is a somewhat "old-school" Kindergarten activity. It involves analyzing a picture by describing things seen, applying a title, and composing a sentence about the picture. Then, as a group we analyze our analysis. This can be done in many ways by counting the number of words, counting the letters, counting colors describing the picture, etc. As students get more advanced, they can analyze their work by counting the occurrence of a certain letter, counting nouns vs. adjectives, or perhaps even writing a poem instead of a sentence. The possibilities are endless. The part the students love best about this activity is the "mystery word". Prior to their dissection of the picture, I select a mystery word. The kids love trying to guess it and the student who does gets a small treat. The mystery word will then be noted by a star. It's amazing how much something as simple as this motivates them to participate.

A picture module is super simple to create. I just take a picture from an old calendar (or magazine), paste it to chart paper, and away we go! If you have any old calendars around the house, feel free to share! Take a look below to see our picture modules from this week!