No matter what subject you teach, you generally need visual supports to help students access the main point of your lesson. Sometimes a textbook may have good materials, but often times it may fall a bit short in presenting a full picture of a concept or event. This leads teachers to trying to locate other sources to help clarify for students the concepts being taught.
To ease the work load in this area, check out
NYC Public Library Digital Picture Collection. This is a photograph collection spanning hundreds of years and topics. To use the site, go to the long white slim rectangular box in the middle of the page. Click on drop down menu and then select the area of interest. You can save the images on your laptop unless your district blocks it. It is possible to print them out to use with a document camera. A last option is to save the links in a bookmark or favorite folder to pull from as needed.
These powerful images can be used by students too in creating reports, powerpoints, etc. In fact, if you have ELLs, you could pass out 1 photo to small groups of 2 or 4. Provide the students with some reflection questions. Allow them 5-7 minutes to discuss what the photo reveals to them without any writing. Once the small group discussions are completed, you can add to the vocabulary and content material by conducting a whole group discussion and charting the key points (and vocabulary) generated by the class. This approach fully equips the ELL to then take this knowledge and apply it to more demanding activities such as navigating key parts of the textbook or writing about the subject. MIND MAPS will help here (see
MIND MAPS post for details). The more support you provide the ELL with in class, the more success the ELL will experience in doing any assignments based on the lesson you delivered.
Enjoy!
Denise
ELL TEACHER PROS
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