One of the benefits of using an unusual photograph – like this one of children’s television character Rapid Transit Rabbit taking a trip on the subway – is that it can take your lesson in unexpected directions, giving both teachers and students full rein to exercise their creativity.
Some of this month’s entries to the Cambridge English Empower competition took full advantage of this opportunity, spinning interesting stories around the photograph. One of the most imaginative approaches came from Fadi Taher of Syria, who ingeniously linked the picture to a well-known fable. Before showing students the photograph, Fadi suggested asking them to summarise the tale of the tortoise and the hare – an animal quite similar to a rabbit – in which the slower tortoise beats the faster hare in a race, thanks to the latter’s over-confidence.
Once students have done this, the teacher then asks them to discuss in pairs an unexpected question: how could the hare have cheated to win the race… if it took place in the city? After eliciting some answers from learners, the teacher then shows them the photograph – showing the rabbit/hare taking a short cut on the subway – and allows some time for responses, before introducing the concept of ‘giving advice’ by asking students what advice they’d give the hare on stopping cheating. This then offers an interesting and unusual context for introducing or revising modals such as ‘must’, ‘should’ and ‘have to’, and different strengths of advice, before moving on to more common situations to practise further.
Fayeq Shoubash Hassan of Jordan had a similarly creative response to the photograph, seeing it as an opportunity to explore some of the language associated with different animals. After eliciting examples of the qualities most commonly associated with animals, beginning with rabbits, the teacher then asks students to imagine that all the animals are attending a party – how will each animal behave?
The teacher can then introduce some of the figurative language associated with animals – for instance, acting sheepishly, squirreling food away, or wolfing it down – before a final role play exercise, in which each student takes the part of an animal at the party, and has to act in the way associated with the expression associated with their animal. Their fellow learners have to guess what animal they’re pretending to be by watching their behaviour and then using the appropriate expression in a sentence: ‘Stop hounding me!” or “You’re being awfully sheepish!”
Both these ideas showed considerable creativity, but our winner this month is Thierry Jullien of France, who proposed a role-play that also made good use of technology to extend the learning beyond the classroom… and maybe even onto public transport! Students begin by developing a scripted conversation between the two men and the man inside the rabbit costume, before filming the conversation outside the classroom for homework. The resulting videos can then be watched in class the following week, and points allocated both for creativity and use of particular language.