 Welcome to the Ory County Schools Teacher Blog series. In this series, we will be spotlighting the work of some of our amazing teachers, and they will be sharing and reflecting on various lessons, tech tools, and teaching strategies. Join us for a peek into their classrooms. Welcome to Pain in Fourth Presents. My name is Emily Payne, and I teach fourth grade in South Carolina. Over the past few years, our social study standards have transitioned into more of an inquiry-based process. As a result of this shift, my school district has developed a digital portfolio as our summative assessment, which gives the students choice and flexibility with how they demonstrate their learning. One way I've shifted instruction for this digital portfolio assessment is we've started to do digital photo analysis using primary and secondary sources, including photographs and artworks and political cartoons of the time period. Students are able to analyze feelings and motivations and actions and perspectives of the time period. These are just a few examples from all throughout our social studies units of the different types of photo analysis that we have done throughout the year. Let's take a closer look at why we might use this in our classroom. So one of the main reasons why I did photo analysis in this digital format is our district has put together lots of resources for us for our social studies units, and they are all in a digital form already, so it's really just super easy to shift it over to the kids. Also, our assessment is that digital portfolio website, why not have things already in a digital format that they can upload onto their website to show their learning? The engagement piece with a digital aspect is amazing. The kids love drawing on their iPads already, so just give them the learning piece that goes with it and let them draw away. Also, the idea of the ownership. Engagement leads to ownership, and the students are really owning the learning when they're engaged in it and when they are super happy to do it. So when students are getting these photos digitally, usually it ends up being me sending them out via Google Classroom, and then the kids take a screenshot of the photo that I've sent them a PDF version of or a JPEG version of, and they take their screenshot and then they have all the editing tools on the screenshot from the iPad. So that gives us our starting point for how we do our analysis. So now we get to the actual analysis part. When we do our analysis, it is not just about what do you see on the paper. We need to get to that deeper meaning. We need to get to the point behind the photograph. And as part of our social study standards, that inquiry process means that the kids need to get to the learning themselves. Of course, I'm still going to guide them through these analysis pieces, and of course I'm still going to push them in the right direction for the learning that comes out of it. But really, our inquiry standards, that's the focus of social studies, is the inquiry piece, the students getting the information for themselves. So how do I get them to the point where they can look at the piece themselves and get a lot of the information without me having to give it to them? In this example, the first thing I asked the students to identify was what stands out to them the most. And obviously, it was the hands sticking out of the trains. After we get to the point where the students have told me what stands out to them the most, that's the part where the analysis has to begin. What they tell me stands out most to them is where our discussion starts. It's not a cookie cutter situation, it's not a one size fits all. It is a what does your class give you and that's where you start. That's the whole point. It's the whole point of this analysis is letting the kids get you where you need to go. I will guide them in certain directions and ask them to look at specific people, objects or actions that are in the photograph. And then we talk about the words that are on the screen in front of them. What do those words mean? Why did the author or the illustrator put those words into this photograph? They have to have some kind of deeper meaning. And then we start to look at things that might be metaphors or illusions in the photograph. We did a couple of photo analysis this year where there was a picture of a queen sitting at a table being served by maids being served by servants and the servants were holding platters. Now obviously the platters of food are not what we are supposed to be getting at. So we analyzed all of those pieces, all of those images for what they represented. What was the bigger meaning behind all of that? Now the whole time that this discussion is happening, students are taking their own annotations. They're circling things, they're taking notes. Some people hand write the notes and some even type their notes into their photo analysis. Each student is going to have a slightly different analysis for what stands out most to them. But based on the discussion, almost every student gets to the deeper meaning of the photograph. Even if they only remember one piece of it, we've gotten to a deeper level of learning from one photograph. If we look back at the first example, we'll notice they focused on the analysis on the train. In this second example, this student chose to identify the things below the train as well. Notice the arrows pointing at the Native Americans running away. In this example we looked at a lot of metaphors. The angel in the center with the light behind her moving into the darkness. We had lots of discussions about what the power lines meant and which acts we had learned about each piece represented. That's the beauty of this kind of analysis. Each student makes their own determinations about what's important and focus on different aspects of the photo analysis throughout the whole process. The students tell me what's important. They lead the discussion. And since they're the ones that are doing the learning, it's pretty important that they lead the discussion. They own what they're learning. Yay for student ownership! Thanks for watching an episode of our Ori County Schools Teacher Vlog series. Make sure to like, follow, and subscribe to all of our deer diss social media pages.