Anyone for my wedding album?

Got your pics from the weekend dacha BBQ with yourself and others in varying states of repair? Why not use them in the classroom to truly embarrass yourself and the students you love. The following are some tips on using any pics you may have or can find for various situations.

Using your own photos:

Assumption: That you are a well-traveled TEFL junkie who has an addiction to taking pictures of everything and anything that moves and of course stays still.

Aims: expressing opinion, comparing, speaking

Level: elementary - advanced

Organisation: groups

Preparation: about 20-30 varied holiday snaps, preferably of different places and locations.

Procedure:

1) Spread pictures on a table or on the floor so all learners can see them.

2) On the board write some questions:
E.g.
Where do you think these places are?
Which place do you think I found most interesting?
Where do you think I enjoyed myself most?

3) Divide the students into groups and get them to walk around looking at the pictures, discussing as they go.

4) Take one student from each group and place them in a new group to share ideas.

5) Get all the students back together and get feedback on what they think and then tell them your side of the story.

Some extra ideas:

a) Students select one picture and create an advert for the place.

b) Students discuss the good/bad points of a holiday shown in one of the pics.

c) The groups talk about their best/worst holidays, possibly with pictures.

For practicing structures:

Assumption: your students have a memory each

Aims: reported speech, particularly "say and tell"

Level: int. - upper int.

Preparation: about 12 pics from a previous lesson.

Procedure:

1) Ask students how good they think their memories are.

2) Give out photos and ask them briefly if they remember them, what they did with them and who they worked with on them. The students match up with who they worked with and discuss what they can remember was said during the previous activity (What did I say about …? I'm sure you said… I told you…)
This is of course the point where the lesson falls apart as they can't even remember the start of the lesson let alone sometime last week, but persevere and they may get better memories in the long term.

3) Get feedback on how accurate their recollections were and build up a grammar chart on the board with the exponents of reported speech.

There will be More scintillating ideas next month.

This article has been faithfully plagiarized from, Woolcott, Lyn. 1992. Take Your Pick due to time constraints and the ever-present sloth gene in my DNA.