Vocabulary… such an essential part of comprehension.
When readers cannot connect meanings to words in a story and/or lack prior knowledge to truly understand key details, comprehension suffers. Pictures and videos can help to fill in these blanks for readers, making the reading experience richer and more meaningful. With the use of the Internet, opportunities for helping our students expand their vocabulary and understanding abound.
Programs like Picnik (which sadly is closing in April) make it easy to create vocabulary cards like these for some of the key words in the picture book Snowflake Bentley:
For more complex concepts like evaporation and the photography process, there are a variety of videos available: Evaporation Water Cycle
And if your students want to see a photo of the camera that was “taller than a newborn calf and cost as much as [Bentley’s] father’s herd of ten cows,” visit this site and then check out this page for more info on bellows cameras from the 1800s.
As time and resources allow, students could also search for examples to expand their own vocabularies and knowledge, having fun along the way learning what a difference a picture can make.
Picture This! Visual Literacy in the Classroom 