1. Generating Ideas Day 2: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
How Writers Work Unit 1
8th Grade Writers Workshop

2. Rationale:
Another way writers can generate ideas is by using photographs as a springboard for writing since each one holds so many stories and memories.
You will generate ideas for your writing by using photographs to reflect on an experience that you have had.

3. During Mini Lesson Scoot your chair closer to me
Take your notebook and put it on your lap.
Have your chair turned towards me.
Make sure you cannot just see me but hear me clearly.

4. Mini Lesson: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
Inform: Pictures, especially photographs, provide powerful inspiration for writers. The images may evoke memories of stories, incite emotions like anger or humor, or drive the creative mind to want to describe something in detail.
So having photographs or pictures on or inside your Writer’s Notebook is a wonderful way to gather ideas for writing.

5. Mini Lesson: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
Present: Lois Lowry’s picture book Crow Call is based on a single photograph that she discovered when she was writing her book Looking Back. – pg 29.
In Looking Back, Lois describes the day she got the shirt from her Dad.
He had just returned from the war and she thought it was a wonderful shirt.

6. Mini Lesson: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
However…this shirt inspired other ideas too.
On Page 7 of Crow Call Lois gives a physical description of the shirt and how it was purchased.
She also describes her Dad’s character through his reactions to the events in the story.
She explains that the story is not just hers, but parent and child trying to understand each other.

7. Mini Lesson: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
From this one photo, there are at least four writing possibilities:
Anecdote
A picture book
A character sketch
Commentary essay
We are going to do the same kind of work that Lois

8. Mini Lesson: Writing Ideas from a Photograph
The photos you are about to see evoke many ideas and emotions.
We are going to do some writing based on a picture.
First you are going to write a detailed description of everything in the photograph.

9. Dorothea Lange’s photo of the Migrant Mother from the Great Depression

10. New York Firefighters at the World Trade Center after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001

11. Margaret Hamilton, NASA lead software engineer, and this is the Apollo guidance program she wrote.

12. Orangutan climbs up a tree in Indonesia’s Gunung Palung National Park, on Borneo

13. Your Turn To Write: Picture Possibilities
Complete the assignment handed out using one of the two photos provided.
As you work on the writing you should select at least two of these questions to help you think and write about the photograph. Feel free to choose more to fill at least a page.