I didn’t create Friday Photo. It was something suggested by my mentor, but I did repurpose and redefine it. Friday Photo is a great way to teach critical thinking and media literacy. It is a weekly part of my practice that I happily share because of its impact on individual students and class culture. It’s also really cool.
When I first started using Friday Photo, I was teaching Grade 4 Language Arts. I would show a weekly photograph that aligned with the learning of the week. It may be be to complement a lesson on characterization, something related to figurative language or as a prompt for narrative writing. I didn’t begin to have students analyse the text until I began teaching Grade 7 English.
In Grade 7 English, Friday Photo became a tool for teaching media literacy. I had located a great resource by Laura McCoy to help me develop the process that I use for the students to decode a photograph: describe, analyse, interpret, evaluate. I facilitate the experience by using different colours on the Smartboard for each stage. I have the photograph on a Smart Notebook document so that we can write on it. Now, I use this in my MYP 2 Individuals and Societies class (History/Geography/Social Studies) for an even greater variety of purposes. It adds the current events and global aspects that make this a great offering in an IB classroom (International Baccalaureate) where Approaches to Learning Skills are paramount.
When the students come into my classroom on Fridays, the image that I have prepared is already up on the Smartboard. They get 5 minutes lead time to activate schema and begin to go through the phases of decoding the text independently in their (digital) notebooks. Some students make it all the way to evaluating, but the time allotted is more for inclusion in terms of processing speed and ensuring that everyone in the class has an entry point into the discussion.
The first stage is describing. It invites all learners, and hands go up around the room because describing is just about what they see. It is an easy first step that is accessible everyone. Students describe:
people
objects
colours
time of day
landscape
shapes
textures
I record each one of the observations the students make regarding any details they notice. Each stage uses a different pen colour on the text.
The second stage is about analysing. Students begin to ask questions about the text. I record any questions the image evokes for them, even if they are unrelated to the meaning of the text. Why this angle? What's left out? Like with the describing stage, the questions, in a different pen colour, are annotated onto the photograph. That's when their thinking starts to connect the dots. As a result, the next stage builds onto the first two.
In the interpreting stage, the students look at their questions and descriptions and start to put the pieces together. They infer where and when, they sometimes infer what and how. The goal is to use the information from the description and analysis stages to draw conclusions about the photograph. While I have seen many students pull it all together in this stage, I will usually build context and explain my selection before we move on to evaluating.
In the evaluating stage, I provide some information, and the students self direct to further investigate the image. Then, the students name the photograph. The name is a creative and collaborative process that we all really enjoy. The students synthesize the meaning and message and distill it into a few words or a phrase that tells the story of the picture or would make a persuasive headline. That is how we tie the entire experience together in 15 minutes every Friday.
I have written about Friday Photo in a previous post. I was inspired by how my students helped fill in the gaps of my sports knowledge through the analysis of the Joe Bautista hit and resulting bat throw for the Jays. The photograph below shows every stage (minus interpreting) on one image to help illustrate the process.
I thought I would share a few Friday Photo images from my ever growing collection and explain how I use them. I would encourage anyone reading/sharing this post to add an image that they think is worthy of analysis for the age-group, though I believe this would be effective in classrooms all the way through high school
Each of the above photographs were selected for a distinct purpose, but you can never anticipate everything the students will bring to the table. It's fantastic! Going row by row, I always begin with a 9/11 photograph. As the anniversary of this tragic event begins the school year, it is a good way to activate schema around what the students know about 9/11, but it also allows them to glean meaning from the colour, angle and story of the image. It is something that I use to support them learning how the Friday Photo process works while also giving informed respect to the solemn day.
Soon after, I will use the famous Kiss in Times Square also known as V-J Day in Times Square. I use that to explain angles and the power of capturing a moment. The students use the buildings for context and the advertisements for time. Between the interpreting and evaluation stages, I tell them the story of the photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and I give them the history of Victory Day. Then, I show them similar images from different angles. The convergence of time, place and space is beautifully illustrated in this photograph.
When something is in the news and relates to the students, I will find a rich photograph of the topic and bring it to the class. This "My Little Pony" photograph was used because I was teaching a unit on gender in English class. This story was pretty big at the time because this boy's school would not permit him to bring his My Little Pony backpack. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, I showed the next image, and we spoke about this terrible event. Decoding these texts connect students to the present, but they are also a catalyst for thinking about big ideas like gender roles and gun legislation.
The next image is one of Elizabteh Eckford being yelled at in a crowd that included Hazel Bryan. It is key to explaining the history of the Civil Rights era in the United States while it also helps to support the power of the angle of a photograph. Elizabeth is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of black students who were being integrated into an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 amid protests and threats. After the decoding, we view the other images of that day with officers walking the students into school or other angles of the image that are less telling. What makes this a rich text is that you see Elizabeth's grace in the face of this clear humiliation. Racism is a difficult conversation and images like this are important catalysts.
The next image is one of Felix Baumgartners "supersonic freefall". It's a way to shake things up, talk about risk takers, discuss technology and even look into corporate sponsorship as the RED Bull label is often noticed and questioned. I usually end that decoding with showing the class footage of his plummet. It's pretty awesome.
It's amazing how often the National Geographic cover of the two young women and older men nicely dressed is decoded for its actual content- child marriage. My students amaze me. I have also seen many interpretations where the men are viewed as parents protecting the children, which leads to a good conversation on children's rights, human rights and different cultural understandings of the concept. This photograph is a very rich text.
The last image that I will share is the ubiquitous face of Anne Frank. I have used this image for different purposes depending on whether I am teaching Language and Literature or Individuals and Societies. Regardless of the discipline, the decoding focuses on the angle and message of her far off glance. The students usually call it "optimism" which is in line with everything we know about her through her diary. The resulting titles that the students provide for the image are profound and have even led to personal inquiries into her life, curiosity about those young lives lost in the Holocaust with wonderings of who they would have grown to become. That one Friday Photo has often resulted in student self-directed readings of her famous diary: Diary of a Young Girl aka The Diary of Anne Frank.
Friday Photo is so loved by my students that the Grade 8's complain about missing it since they are no longer in Grade 7. When I told them that I was writing this post, a few different responses came out that I had to record. They expressed their love of Friday Photo because they:
learned new things
saw from unique perspectives
learned about the news in a relevant and meaningful way
it made news exciting
it's easy and fun
it's good to annotate images instead of only text
One student even reflected," After a few months of Friday Photo, I started looking at pictures in the world differently and asking questions. Sometimes I would notice something small in a corner that would change how I understood the picture." Friday Photo helps build transferable skills such as media literacy and critical thinking.
Every day, we are exposed to hundreds, maybe even thousands of images. Children's social media consumption and their obsessions with apps like Snapchat and Instagram illustrate the importance of this literacy. Friday Photo is a wonderful way add visual and critical literacy to their media literacy skill lessons in many subject areas. Photography is art, but it also history, geography, narrative, thought, perspective and a mirror of society. What I try to offer my students through Friday Photo is a chance to be critical about what they see. Friday Photo provides opportunities for them to think deeply and ask questions about the meanings and perspectives in a photograph.
