Sherry Bender

July 16, 2015

The purpose for my collection of graphics that I created is to aid in students

visualization of proper classroom expectations and behaviors. As I am a first grade
teacher, at the beginning of the year, many of my students do not enter class with a strong
understanding of appropriate behavior. I teach in a very high-poverty area where good
role models can be hard to find.
I expect my students to come in every morning, prepared to immediately get
started with their learning for the day. The student in this picture is helping to establish
visual cues for my class.
My audience for my graphics are my first grade students. Most are six years of
age. Approximately 90% of my students are English Language Learners, and 100%
receive free or reduced lunch at school. The content area that I am focusing on is
Language Arts, which encompasses reading and writing. Language Arts, in one form or
another, accounts for 50% of our school day, so reaching students as soon as they enter
first grade sets the tone for a successful school year. It is better to set expectations on Day
One, rather than try to fix it later in the year.
To create my first collection of graphics from one picture, I selected a photograph
that I took last year of my son, Logan. For the original photo, I needed to resize the
image. To accomplish this, I used the Picassa 3 program. First, I clicked on Crop, and
then selected Custom Aspect Ratios and input the dimensions I wanted (640x480) and

saved the changes. I selected Export and then saved the image on my computer as
Original.
Next, to crop my photo, I again used Picassa 3 and selected Crop, and then I
selected Manual and cropped the photo to show just Logan. I had to press Apply to
make the changes happen. Again, I saved the image and exported and saved the image on
my computer with Cropped in the title.
The last manipulation of this photo was also using Picassa 3. I used the
photograph of just Logan and clicked on the blue sky and paintbrush just to the left of the
picture. Then, I selected Pencil Sketch and pressed Apply. I saved the new image and
exported and saved to my computer using Adapted in the file name.
To save the scanned document of a student work sample, I had to scan the
document in my scanner and save it to my computer. I selected this particular sample
because it is a good indicator of work my students can produce with minimal assistance
from myself.
I created a visual picture for my students using the Paint program. This proved to
be challenging for me, but I think I was simply overthinking a relatively simple program.
To begin, I created a thought bubble and added text as if asking a question. Next, I
selected various geometric shapes to create the person asking the question. Once I had the
body designed, I added color. To do this, I selected the bucket of paint that says Fill with
color and selected various colors to fill in all the person. I also gave the picture a pale
background color. I had to resize the picture, and to do so I simply selected Resize and
input the dimensions I desired (640 x 472). Last, I saved the image.

My final picture was found online. I am always looking for new ideas to set up
my classroom, and found this as one possible example of designing a writing station. To
find this image, I Googled First grade writing centers and then selected Image when
the results came up. I scrolled through the various images until I found one that I may be
interested in using this coming school year. To save the image, I right-clicked my mouse
and selected Save image as and then named the image and saved it as a JPEG image
file.

Reference List

https://www.google.com/search?
q=first+grade+classroom+writing&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=
667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMI5fnE
mrvhxgIViX6SCh2LfABk#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=first+grade+classroo
m+writing+centers&imgrc=AAV9-xqLDN9qqM%3A