Thinking Routines & Photographs: Gorillas

 School is closed for a second day due to Irma knocking out power and knocking down trees across Atlanta. Although most of my neighborhood is without power, we seem to be okay for the minute.
Obviously I am a hyper person, who needs to stay busy, so with my surprise day off I am working on a curriculum/experiences (I'm a nerd...sorry).

Recently I've shared a series of artful thinking routines/experiences with some of my favorite pieces of art (here's one example). I've decided to make a second series using thought provoking photographs and photographs of current events. This is because I often share 'photographs of the week' with my advisory students and also I just enjoy looking at the myself. Photographs are a great tool for building empathy, having students explore their own feelings  on a situation, great for exploring current events and global issues....and mostly they are a great way to grab students' attention - a real hook! 

Although we explore similar photographs often, I've decided to formalize this activity, by putting them into a rolling slide deck (found here).  I also usually look at these images when we have a few minutes of free time / another activity has finished quickly - but will now take more time to explore these.

Each experience will have three slides:
1. Instructions for the routine/activity
2. The photograph
3. More information about the photograph (where it was taken, what the accompanying news story was, who took the photograph, etc - sometimes I've added in further explorations too).

Although the images are taken from photos of the week/current events - I've tried to select some photographs which you could still use in a year or two. I've also put photographs that link to both heavy and light hearted topics. I will continue to add photographs when I see them - please send me any you think would work nicely.

I've used Project Zero Visible Thinking Routines and Artful Thinking Routines - as well as a few of my own.

Here are the instructions along with the first 'experience' (slide deck found here):

Links:

• The Gorilla that Loves to Look at Smartphones
• Louisville Zoo, in Kentucky (Google Maps)
• ​Louisville Zoo page about their gorillas
• See, Think, Wonder