Picture of the week has quickly become one of my, and my students’, favorite activities that we’ve done this year thanks to the New York Times! I’ve used Jen Jones’ Picture of the Day activity in the past and have loved it!
Then I stumbled upon the New York Times website this year and fell in love! I could put the thinking behind Picture of the Day, but yet add in some current events with my students. It is a two for one!
Each week the New York Times posts a different picture on their “What’s Going on in this Picture” site and takes the caption away. This creates a picture of the week for us to analyze, discuss + make inferences about!
Each week we analyze it at the beginning of the week and check back in on Friday after they have revealed the caption. It has created so many discussions about current events and geography in our classroom that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It also creates a quick high-level activity that we can complete each week.
When asked if others have used it, I got some other great ideas on how to do a picture of the week in the classroom so I thought I’d make a quick list!
- “What is it Wednesday?”: Students come up with their own caption for the photo! Then create a #bestcaptionever board + place the picture and captions on the bulletin board!
- Cool Places Around the World: Print out pictures of cool places around the world. Students write out their observations, inferences and then create a sales pitch all without knowing where the picture is located!
- School-wide Picture: each class discusses the images and justifies what they think is hap[pening in the picture. They can even discuss it at home with their families!
You can grab this FREE printable here OR just simply have a discussion without your students needing anything to write on! Either way works and we do it differently each week to switch it up!
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