Day 1 - Multiple Perspectives

My first literacy lesson on multiple perspectives went very well. The students learned the meaning of perspective and that different people have many different views or ideas, causing them to see the big picture differently. This lesson was a lot of fun for the students and based on their feedback in class, I think they understood the concept well. Their task was to use a small piece of a picture, which was given, and illustrate the big picture that they think it belongs to. After they finished, I had individual students share their drawings with the class, they used language that hinted to me their knowledge about the concept. Students said things such as, “This is the way I saw it”, “I thought about it differently than April”, and “Me and Sam saw the same thing.” I would also take the time to ask students the question, “What was your perspective?” Students knew how to respond appropriately by answering things like, “When I looked at the picture, I thought it belonged to a turtle.” “My perspective was cool…I thought it was a crown on a king.”

This feedback was very useful as it showed me they really had a grasp on the meaning of perspective. We were further able to analyze perspective as I showed them what the picture piece actually belonged to. The picture piece came from the book, “Zoom”. In this book, each page that you flip shows how the small picture piece fit into a larger picture. It’s literally like you are zooming out further and further until you see the ultimate, big picture. The students absolutely loved this book and they wanted a chance to make predictions about the author’s perspective as well as give their own. Since many students were so interested in thinking like the author, I gave them time to predict what he was thinking before we flipped the pages and share aloud with the class. This practice extended beyond my overall lesson objectives. Nowhere in my plans did I intend for them to predict an author’s perspective. It was nice to learn that my students were able and willing to think critically on their own.

This lesson also taught me that my students have such a creative imagination and have very good drawing skills as well. I was impressed with some of the things they came up with and their ability to portray their thoughts into an illustration simply amazed me. By no means did they try to ‘play it safe’ with their ideas. Most students really took the time to think outside of the box and made sure to accurately portray them into their drawings. Most of them included fine detail and covered up the entire page with illustration. Some students even had text in their drawings. Their work was another example of them performing beyond my lesson objectives.

Out of the entire lesson, I think there was only one student who struggled with the concept. When it was time for students to make their illustration, the student seemed lost and confused, I restated the directions to him the best that I could and told him to try his best. After the lesson, when I was looking at all of the drawings, I noticed he turned in a blank piece of paper. I’m not sure what he didn’t understand, whether it was the concept itself or if it was just the directions that confused him. I think that for students like him, I may have needed to explain the directions of the task more clearly. I think I should’ve used a visual model of how to take a piece of the picture and illustrate it into a much larger picture. I should’ve modeled how to draw my picture as well as modeled all of my thought processes as I went along.

If I were to teach this lesson again, I would definitely keep all of the components since for the most part, they were very successful. Although, as I already stated, I will have to make sure that I model how to do an illustration using a small picture piece. I will make sure that students see how I’m doing it and also hear my thought processes at the same time. Perhaps this will make the directions more clear and ALL students will know how to do their own drawing. Another thing that I may change for future lessons is extend the objectives by having students think about the author’s perspective while going through the Zoom book. I thought it was fantastic that the students not only thought of their own perspective but took the time to try to think of someone else’s. This activity could really enhance student learning as it helps them to practice critical thinking skills, something that they will need to have later on in the unit. This is definitely something that could be practiced with future students.