Picture vs. Text Evidence

An article about Picture vs. Text Evidence

Finding evidence in the pictures versus finding evidence in the text is a skill we are working on in first grade (RI 1.6). It is important to tell where you are getting your information. Eventually, this standard builds into using the text and pictures to tell more about a character, setting, or event of a story/text.

We’ve done this in a million ways and I finally wanted to put it in the hands of my students (now that we can mostly read and write by ourselves, YAY).

I took the idea of a gallery walk and put a little spin on it to capture the skill we were working on. If you don’t know what a gallery walk is, it is something like a scoot/roam the room. I run my gallery walk like this:

1. Group students
2. Place information in the middle of each table group
3. Have students discuss/write on the paper at the table
4. Rotate each group until they’ve engaged with all the information

Since it was March, we focused our learning on Ireland, but this can work for any subject. On each table was a circle map chart paper with the subject in the middle as well as a sheet protecter with subject specific text on one side and pictures on the other. There was a key at the top of our circle map that showed us everything we write in green is evidence from the pictures. Everything we wrote in orange is evidence from the text.

The first time I rotated the groups through the gallery walk, they were asked to only look at the pictures and write statements or inferences of what they notice in the pictures that have to do with the subject. For all the picture evidence we wrote in green.

The next day, we did the same gallery walk, but this time, there was a leader who read the text aloud to the group. The students had to write down facts/information they had learned from the text. For all the text evidence we wrote in orange.

Later, we gathered together and made some conclusions about looking at the pictures vs. the text. We noticed that sometimes you can get the same information from both the picture and the text. We noticed we could get information from the pictures and the text. We noticed we usually got more information from the text than the pictures. We noticed the pictures help us imagine what it looks like and helps us make inferences about a subject.

Lastly, I asked the students to pick a subject they’d like to be the reporter on. I set out the circle maps, the text, and the pictures with all our evidence. They worked in groups to create a short writing piece about their subject (we all came up with the intro/conclusion and some sentences starters to keep them on track in their writing). I hung the work on our wall underneath our writing!

The students had such a blast, learned a lot, and really mastered the skill! I know we will be doing something similar to this again soon. I hope you will be able to use this idea for picture vs. text evidence in your classroom!

Please note: A lot of our Ireland information came from A Year of Firsts Non Fiction Ireland Unit. I also used images from Google as well as information from the internet, so I will not be able to provide you with any of these exact items.