Mirror image

Giving your students' brains a quick workout doesn't get much simpler than this, and you'll be able to hear those synapses firing.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Intensive reading, sentence structure, vocabulary

What you need:
Cartoons from The Lighter Side (page 64 in Spotlight), copied on to transparencies.

What you do:
Place a cartoon on the projector the wrong way round and hide the caption. Show the students the cartoon. Most pictures will not include any text, but if this one does, tell the students what it says and reassure them that it doesn't matter that the picture is the wrong way round.

Give the students a moment or two to mentally process the picture.

Reveal the mirror image of the caption, and ask your students, working individually or in pairs, to work out what it says.

Depending on the level of your students and how much attention you want to pay to the language in the caption, you can do this in different ways; for example:

• Make it a race.
• Insist that students write down the caption before they are allowed to say it aloud.
• Reveal the sentence word by word, from the beginning, or from the end.
• Conceal one or more of the words that the students then try to guess from the context/grammar.

As everyone tends to a bit cross-eyed for a few moments with this activity, you might want to suggest your students rub their eyes before you carry on with the rest of the lesson.

The next Try It Out post will appear on Monday 7 June.