Activity 3A
Handout copies of A Guide for Looking at Photographs and work through it together using one photograph as an example.

i.   Students choose an image they are drawn to and record their responses to questions in A Guide for Looking at Photographs.

ii.  Ask students to put themselves into the photograph they've chosen and to choose a point of view.  Then pose the following questions:

    Are you an object in the photograph?  A person?  Something just outside the frame?    

    The photographer?  Be anyone or anything thing except yourself.

iii. Students describe, in writing, the scene from this new point of view.  Students use clues from the photograph to create a name and an identity for this character.

iv. Students are encouraged to use their imaginations in answering the following questions.  Stress that it is okay to invent as long as it is consistent with what's going

on in the picture.

  • Where is the character from? 

  • Who are their friends/family? 

  • What kind of mood they are in?  

  • What do they do for a living?

  • What would they wish for?   

Activity 3B
Have students write a monologue from their character's point of view. Encourage intermediate and senior students to conduct research as part of this process. 

i.   Monologue should give the audience a sense of who the character is. Monologues

can be as polished or as rough as time allows. 

ii.  Students present their monologues to the class

iii. Discussion: 

  • Do the monologues give the audience a new perspective on the photograph? 

  • Discuss what clues in the photograph led to specific aspects of the monologue.

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