Building Critical Thinking Skills with Picture Prompts

Image from TeacherNotepad.com 

Looking at the image on your right, finish this thought:

You discover one day that you have a special power...

Picture Prompts are a way to get students engaged quickly, think critically about an image, and make predictions about what is happening in the image by using their critical thinking skills. Two of my favorite sites to use to pull images from are The New York Times and  Teacher’s Notepad. You can sign up as an educator and receive images from The New York Times. When you sign up for the NY Times newsletter, you will receive free lesson plans and weekly New York Times images to use with your students. Teacher’s Notepad requires no signup, is free, and is great for quick creative writing prompts.

Image from TeacherNotepad.com 

I enjoy using images from the Teacher's Notepad because it has a vast amount of prompts to easily search from Middle School prompts, Picture Writing Prompts for Kids (Grades 1, 2, and 3), Visual Writing Prompts, Fascinating Places Picture Prompts, and Animal Picture Prompts. The teacher resources writing activities are amazing to use as well. I enjoy using the Funny Writing Prompts and there are some just for 3rd grade, for descriptive writing, for teens, and much more. 

Image from TeacherNotepad.com 

Using the New York Times images, there are several ways to use picture prompts and you can customize them for your students. I used this with my students for creative writing, but you could use this as a jump start or an exit activity. You can have an image on your display and allow students to write about what they see and what they think is happening in the image. When you are ready, you can have students share with their small group or partner what they thought. Next, the students can share with the class some of their ideas about the image. You can either tell them what the article was about, read the article (with teacher discretion, of course), or give the students the link in their Google Classroom to read on their own. 

You can use the other picture prompts to create a Google Slideshow for the entire week and display each slide for the day of the week. When students arrive in your class and see the prompt on the screen, they can start writing or thinking, log into their Google Classroom to respond, write a response using a Jamboard for all to see, or some other method for them to express their ideas. The teacher can then allow students to share with their small group or partner before allowing students to volunteer to share with the entire class.

When used routinely, students can improve their critical thinking skills through listening to other ideas, expressing their own ideas and feelings, and making predictions. This is also a great way to help develop your classroom management with your routines and expectations.