The Stories Pictures Will Tell (If You Just Listen)

First I want to say what an interesting story and wonderful tribute to Wesley, a very sad situation, but your pictures told the story well.
Secondly, today is an interesting day for you to post this.  Last year was my first and only time to teach US history so on September 11, I put one picture from that day on my board and asked my students to tell me, through writing, what was happening in the picture.  I teach 6th grade, most of my students last year were toddlers on 9/11 and their elementary teachers had “protected” them from the importance of that day.  One class I just showed a picture of the towers and an airplane and asked them to tell me what would happen on this morning.  They wrote beautiful stories of spring days and sunshine. Only a few noticed the airplane and realized the fate.  Others had pictures of people in the streets with ash falling over them and they wrote about bombs or even volcanoes.
I then showed the classes the clips from the Today show that morning and as they watched the entire tragedy unfold they kept going back to the pictures they had first written about.  “So the planes flew into the buildings?” or “those people with ash on them were there?” Their questions came from those pictures.  They somehow related to the pictures.  They wanted to know more about what happened, but mostly what happened to what they first saw and had already drawn conclusions about.
I use pictures every single day in my classroom.  I do not think I could teach a lesson without having pictures to back up my teaching or storytelling.  Pictures add a depth to our world that we would miss without. Thanks for shedding light on that!