Photographs offer a powerful way of engaging your learners. An exciting and unusual picture can prompt a personal response from students, providing them with just the motivation they need to use the language they’ve been learning.
Last year, we ran a competition for teachers to submit commentary on how they would introduce a specific image in to a lesson plan. April’s competition asked how you’d use this beautiful and surprising picture of a baby orang-utan being washed in a sink. The winning entry came from Milada Krajewska of Poland – congratulations, Milada! – who wrote a lesson plan that included getting students to come up with stories about the orang-utan that fitted into either the ‘comedy’ or ‘thriller’ genre, first as a written 100-word summary, then orally in pairs, each adding a sentence in turn.
Like many of the best suggestions, Milada’s lesson made the most of the photograph’s ‘surprise factor’. She suggested covering up the most surprising part of the image – the orang-utan itself – with sticky notes, and getting students in groups to brainstorm answers to the question “What’s she going to pour water onto?”
Other teachers made use of technology for the same purpose. Hanna Dudich of Ukraine suggested using the tools on an interactive whiteboard or computer to hide the rest of the picture and show only the orang-utan’s face, asking students to guess where he is, and what he is doing. Gerda Reisinger of Austria proposed revealing the picture in stages, starting with the right hand side, then adding the top left, and finally the whole picture, each time encouraging the students to describe what they can see, and explain it.
Volkan Yonarkol of Turkey suggested putting students into groups and giving each member of the group one part of the picture, which they must not show to their fellow group members. Each person would then have to describe their part of the picture to the other group members, so that the group could then ‘piece together’ the image verbally.
Margarita Estrada of Mexico suggested a slightly different approach, showing students the picture for just a second at first and then asking them questions about it, forcing them to pay close attention and work their memories hard – a great warm-up activity for a language-learning lesson!
What all these excellent ideas have in common is a determination to make the most of the opportunities offered by an exciting and unusual image to engage students and get them thinking and speaking. So, when you’re beginning your lesson with an image, don’t throw away the surprise factor by showing it all to your students straightaway! Instead, make that sense of excitement and engagement last by sharing it piece-by-piece, each time encouraging your learners to use both their imaginations and the language they’ve been learning.
For more information on this topic, read our next post: ‘Using photos in the classroom #2- inspiring role play.’