Growing Patterns Photo Selection

In individual conferences, I met with third grade students to review their photos taken last Thursday on the school grounds of St. Therese Catholic School. I used Flickr to organize each student's photos into a set so that I could show them their photos as slide shows at my desk computer. Then, we looked at a few photos that stood out to each student from the slide show so that we could narrow down each set to one photo for the poem writing and book making. I remained neutral during the photo selection, and the students did a wonderful job picking out their better photos.

I recorded what the students said about their photo choices in the comments field of each photo. They chose photos for many different reasons. For some, colors or contrasting color combinations were important factors. For others, the image in the photo reminded them of something else. In some cases, students chose photos because they were "pretty" or because they remembered taking the photo.

When a photo was not in focus, the student was disappointed that he or she had not captured the photo desired. I reminded them that they took their photos with a camera that they used for the first time and that we did not have a lot of time to take our photos and review how photos were turning out on the playground.

Since I don't want to spoil the surprise of the students' final poems and books, I won't show you any of their final selections now. Instead, I'll let you see a peek of some of their other photos that almost made it into the final selection. Tomorrow, we will make our accordion books with measurements based upon the first few numbers in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. You can find good instructions for making a simple accordion book here. Can you guess how we will construct our Fibonacci accordion book? Check back soon to find out!

T. H. took this photo of pansies that her class planted around a tree outside their classroom. Her class also watches birds feeding at a bird feeder hung outside their classroom windows.

J. P. liked this photo of ants spilling out over the recycled rubber tire pieces that surround the playground equipment. He "loves ants."

Not every student looked towards the ground; some looked up at the large trees budding and shedding pollen. This was one of C. R.'s photos.

While less glamorous and colorful than some of the many flower photos the students took, I liked the textures of the lichen, tree branch, and grass in this photo by K. C.