5 Ways to Use One Set of Ilustrations

In preparing a CI unit involving a story, sometimes I like to incorporate my own illustrations of a story into my lessons. I think that it adds another level of comprehensible input for students, as well as aids in engaging students. At the same time, however, I also do not wish to create a series of illustrations if I am only going to use it just once for five minutes in a unit. I want to get maximum benefit from my time creating them. As the brain craves novelty, here is a way to use one set of illustrations in five different ways in a unit. This will require you drawing a set of pictures only once, in addition to using a photo scanner.

NOTE - if you do not feel like you are good enough of an "artist," then you can always have a student illustrate for you. By no means am I a skilled illustrator, but I can definitely draw stick figures, and as the great Sally Davis once told me, "Everyone can draw stick figures."

1. First, create a series of illustrations for Find a Sentence. This set of pictures will serve as your basis which can be used for the other four activities. N.B. - I actually will try to illustrate each sentence in the story (which could be as many as 15), so there may be a 2nd page of pictures, but for Find a Sentence, I will only use one of the pages.
2. Now scan each of those frames individually. Now that you have each picture scanned individually, create a slide presentation of your story with the text and corresponding picture. This can be used to project the story as a review.
   
   
3. Duplicate that slide presentation but now use it as a Cloze Sentence activity.
   
4. Now duplicate that slide presentation of the story but remove the text. Print that slide presentation (in color if possible) for a Picture Story Retell. 
5. Using the original page(s) of pictures, now create a Sentence Picture Relay of the story.

For me, Telling a Story with Pictures and then Cloze Sentences would be early in a unit, Find the Sentence would be in the middle, and both a Sentence Picture Relay and Picture Story Retell would be at the end - all in combination with other activities.

Observations

1. I have found that when using the same pictures of a story for different activities lends to their comprehensibility, since students become very familiar with them and what the illustrations are communicating.