Critical thinking assists a student in navigating their understanding of the world through personal observation and comprehension. This fosters self-assurance and confidence as students realize the outcomes are derived from a thoughtful process that leads to meaningful results. When you combine critical thinking and creativity, students learn better. Engagement, achievement, and motivation all increase when students are free to explore and show their learning in meaningful ways.
The combination of critical thinking and creativity occurs in one of my favorite projects - the five-photo essay. In this activity, students retell a story using only 5 photos. I have students retell a real story like the sinking of the Titanic or a battle of the Revolutionary War. I create a digital resource library with primary source resources such as newspaper clippings, photographs, or diary entries.
In this lesson, I used the retelling of the Titanic. Students had to tell the story of the Titanic, from building to sinking, in five photos. Before they start, we spend two weeks researching the Titanic. They read several historical fiction and non-fiction texts to gather facts and figures about the Titanic. They conduct a Google search to find primary sources that add to their knowledge and to find any images to help them understand the who, what, where, when, and why of the Titanic. They complete asynchronous video discussions, comprehension checks, and formative assessments to show they know the subject matter. Then, I introduce our project.
The project consists of creating a slideshow with six slides. The first slide is the title slide, which contains one image, a title, and an author. The five slides that follow tell the story of the Titanic from building to sinking. Students have access to over 100 primary sources to use, and they must sort through the images to choose just five to tell the story how they want. I like to tell students to pretend they are reporters reporting on the Titanic for the first time. They need to include all the pertinent details and use the images to convey the story and the emotion of the event.
Students have complete creative control over the font, font size, and color. They also have complete creative control over background color, the images that tell the story, and how they compile the retelling. It is amazing how different each retelling is based on each student's perspective. The students comment on how different every retelling is, but that they all retell the sinking of the Titanic. (It's easy to teach them how to look at different perspectives after this project! It also aids in conflict resolution because they can look at something from the other person's perspective.) The students presented their projects from their Chromebooks onto our Interactive Flat Panel TVs. Here are a few images from this project!
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