Many things had to give when we shifted into emergency remote learning, but Snapshots endured. I had assigned them a week before March Break, before we knew we would be staying home for the reminder of the school year. I had a few different ideas about how we could still make happen even if my students were not standing in front of their class to lead the decoding of their own original texts. This synthesis of work in photographs helps my students meet many media literacy expectations while also helping them develop critical thinking and questioning skills.
This BOB project has evolved over the years and was originally part of a Tri-BOB called the PS Series and named the PS3 . In the last two years, it has served as a culminating task from a year of photograph dissection and critical thinking skill development. My Grade 8’s do Friday Photo each week until February. It is a whole-class experience and part of out culture to go through 4 stages of: describe, analysis, interpret/infer and evaluate for a photograph that I have prepared and is on display on the Smartboard (whiteboards work just fine). Every single student adds something to this experience every single week. It's easy entry point of describing really helps invite learners into the experience.
There are prompts on the Friday Photo handout that they place in their Strategies notebooks to help them notice what is in a photograph, raise questions, make inferences and then, after learning more about the photograph, title it in a meaningful way that encompasses the big ideas. Friday Photo creates a gradual release to a formative assessment and then to Snapshot, where students take a photograph of their own, plan the lesson anticipating what their classmates will see in it, lead the decoding and then share their intention and meaning of the text. I try to assign them this before March Break so that they can be mindful and capture a moment if they go on a day trip or something further away. Clearly, that was not how this year went.
The first part of the Snapshot outline reads: Photographs can tell us so much. We have seen the power of photography throughout Friday Photo as a means to look back through history, capture science, a moment, a feeling/experience, and inform on current issues. Now, it is your turn to take and present a “rich” photographic text to analyze. Unpacking the meaning of a rich text requires a lesson to ensure that students see what makes something of enough substance to analyse. Setting students up to lead this is a wonderful and personalizing learning experience, too.
A few adjustments were needed for the Snapshot outline in view of remote learning. The first was that I gave the class a chance to adjust their self-selected due-dates in view of their learning needs. Some wanted to go later, some wanted to go earlier, and those changes were made. Then, I took out the lines of the rubric about their oral presentation skills with the goal of each student owning the room while they lead. My students have loved leading the colour coded steps of the decoding when we go from 100% engagement as students list and describe what they see to a few students ready to synthesize meaning through clever titles that encapsulate messages, double entendres or the events unfolding. Students would be using Jamboards with the stages separated by slides and the image pasted into the middle. The last major adjustment was that I had usually tasked students to take/create their own photograph. I allowed them to use a photograph from the work or take/create one of their own. Snapshots help meet a variety of media literacy expectations while also allowing students to lead a class without having to fully present.
While I have learned things many things from doing this project through remote learning, I know from students' feedback that this was still a very meaningful experience, overall. More significantly, so many of the Snapshot texts changed in response to current events and gave my students avenues to speak about racism among other issues about which they care deeply. I posted each student Jamboard for 24 hours before posting their “reveals” and then asked them to go back to the Jamboard to name the images, as part of the Evaluation stage. The Snapshot project has always given them voice, and the selected texts were a spectrum of thoughts and lessons led by the students. Although not all of my 28 students engaged in remote learning or submitted this project, those who did benefited greatly from the class’s engagement in their work as well as by thoughtfully completing the task. Snapshots engage every class member to take part in each other's work making it a high yielding projects like all of the BOBs I have created and evolved. As always, hearing from my students is something I look forward to.
Daniel- The Snapshot has been the most enjoyable assignment of our school year and I had a great time with it.
Maria- I also love seeing the others’ Snapshots and doing them.
Nika- First week: We also started our Snapshot projects this week. I have enjoyed it so far because I always gather so much information from Friday Photos, and I love that these are my friend’s works! It makes it so much more enjoyable!
Final week: I got to present my Snapshot, and I was so happy to see all the amazing replies!
Aryan- This week is our final week for snapshots. I really enjoyed doing the snapshot project. There were lots of powerful pictures.
Hasan- For the snapshot, I really enjoyed reading people’s answers.
Albert- Overall, I enjoyed the Snapshots due to the niche themes/messages which the Snapshots conveyed.
Here is a gallery of the images submitted (take or chosen by each student):
If you want to learn more about Snapshot or any other BOB project, just ask!
