Animal Pictures: Word Bank & Descriptions

Artifact Description

There are four pictures of animals with curious elements or in interesting settings. On each Jamboard page the student creates a four-item word bank. Using those words, the learner write a description of what they see. There are students examples from first and second graders.

Reflection

The pictures are interesting so the students are curious. There are nouns to identify. In some cases there is a setting or action.

I think this task should become a periodic part of instruction in order to become routine, because it took a few attempts for students to grasp the idea that they should create a mini-word bank, then write a couple of sentences. It's useful for students to do this easily as this concept shows up on some assessments: (1) produce a word bank, (2) write sentences based on those words, and finally (3) write a three to five sentence paragraph story. This Jamboard provides the experience of steps one and two.

In creating the writing boxes, I inserted periods at the beginning of each line, so that students would know where to type. The intent was that I would share the Jamboard virtually, and they would work on their own devices. I felt that they might need guidance on how to find the text box to activate for typing.

We found the act of double clicking on the text box a little clumsy. Clicking on the three-dots to activate the editing command was also a challenge for younger students. This task might work more smoothly on a Google Slide deck.