Media Literacy Lesson - Analyzing Photographs - How to Write an Analysis

Develop your students’ media literacy skills and literary analysis skills with photographs! Students approach analyzing photographs much the same as Literary Analysis, but it activates a visual intelligence that can be applied to a wide range of art and media. This lesson focuses on how to write an analysis of a photograph.

Students will be able to:

✅ Introduce a claim about a photograph

✅ Cite evidence using visual observation

✅ Clarify that evidence in paraphrase

✅ Explain how the evidence supports their claim

✅ Conclude

⭐️ This is a key lesson in my Photo Analysis Unit, and it's great for forging the connection between literary analysis and media analysis in general.

Your media literacy lesson includes:

1. A scaffolded analysis of a historic photograph
2. Two independent activities for analyzing photographs
3. Peer feedback and revision forms
4. Full answer key
5. Low-ink printing options

What other teachers are saying:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I love how this activity scaffolds the analysis skills!” -Lasette M.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “As consumers of an increasing amount of digital images as texts, students will need media literacy to be able to think critically about different types of visual texts. This unit breaks the analysis process into manageable steps to help students understand the artist's message and purpose.” -Christine B., AP Seminar, 11th and 9th grade Honors ELA (full unit review)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This introduces the skills I want students to start using as they read to learn about what writers do and then look for that in the text, so I like that it is short and helps build the skills and stamina that we can later bring to their reading.” -Jeni L.

This media literacy lesson is perfect for...

✅ 7th-10th grade ELA

✅ Yearbook

✅ Journalism

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