Investigating Pictures

Session One

Introduce clue and conclusion.

• Ask if anyone in the class knows what a clue is. Offer several examples of clues, such as those suggested below, and invite the class to reach a conclusion.

After several examples, help students suggest words to define the concepts of clues and conclusions; e.g.,

• Clues are hints or pieces of information that help you find out something.
• Conclusions are answers or ideas that you think of because of a clue.

Invite students to suggest clues.

• Suggest several sample conclusions, such as those below, and invite students to offer clues that might lead to these conclusions.

Introduce the demonstration picture study.

• Indicate to the class that one way people get clues is by looking at pictures. Explain that police officers and detectives study photographs for clues about who someone is and what they might be doing. Display an overhead transparency of the picture selected for demonstration purposes or distribute a copy to each pair of students. Explain that the class will be community detectives–trying to find out about everyone in the community shown in the picture and what they do, where they do it and why. As good detectives, students will take one step at a time and they won't jump to conclusions. Explain that these phrases mean that students will answer one question before moving to the next question and that they will look for clues before coming to a conclusion.
• Create a chart with three columns. Label the first column Questions and the second column Clues. Print What is the person doing? in the question column and ask students to look for clues to the answer. Write their clues in the second column. If students suggest a conclusion instead of a clue, do not write it down, but ask what they see in the picture that encourages them to think that the person is doing this; e.g., Why do you think the person is selling fruit and not selling meat or newspapers? Why do you think the person is selling fruit and not giving it away? Collect student clues and offer some of your own for the what question. Then, label the third column Conclusions. Record students' suggested conclusions and add some of your own. Encourage students to locate additional clues in support of the conclusions they offer. Repeat this procedure with the other three questions until you have a chart similar to the following.

Studying the Picture

Present a practice challenge.

• Distribute a copy of Studying Pictures to each pair of students. Present the critical task:

Find the clues for what, where, who and why in the photograph and then
offer your conclusions for each question.

Ask students to look at the picture for clues to the what question. They are to record these in words or simple drawings in the clues box on the chart. Ask students to share their answers as a class and to add any clues to their chart that they had not already noticed. Discuss the conclusions that might be reached about the what question. Invite students to record these answers in the conclusions box on their sheet. Repeat this procedure until the clues and conclusions to the remaining three questions have been addressed. With the final question, encourage students to discuss why the person is acting in light of the needs that he may help to meet. For example, a taxi driver may be helping people meet their health needs by providing emergency service to people who must get to a hospital. Collect the completed charts to determine how well students understand the task.