Picture stories

As I've explained in a previous post, I'm hopeless at drawing. But I do really believe in classroom drawing activities, and ambiguous drawings are more interesting and communicative anyway. However well or badly students in your class can draw, getting them to put pencil to paper occasionally (there will usually be someone who refuses to, and you'll probably just have to live with this) is a great aid to their learning.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Fluency, vocabulary work, quiet time

What you need:
Blank paper and pens; a Vocabulary page from your chosen issue of Spotlight.

What you do:
Before the lesson, choose the topic that you want the students to focus on. From this month's issue, the topic is at the zoo.

Hand out the paper and coloured pens or crayons, and tell your students that they are going to tell a story. In order to prepare for the story, they will draw a few frames of a picture story.

Set the scene. In this case, I would say: "Can you remember a particular time you went to the zoo? Do you remember zoo visits from your childhood? Has anyone told you about a zoo visit recently? What happened? Have any particular scenes stayed with you? How did you feel the animals were treated? etc. You've got about five minutes to think and draw a short picture story about it."

Give the students a couple of minutes to draw their picture story without talking. Tell them that, as they are drawing, they should imagine that they are telling somebody the story in English. This "mental rehearsing" is really valuable, and creates a special kind of quiet in the classroom.

When the students look as if they are finishing, go round and help with any vocabulary questions.

Put students in pairs or threes. They can now take it in turns to present their zoo story to each other using their pictures, and to discuss them.

If you notice that a student hasn't produced a drawing, you might like to make sure that he or she is paired with someone understanding, who can keep the conversation going. If you get the impression that the student has just decided to opt out, then he or she can just take an observing role.

Now show the class the Vocabulary page (p. 46 or from this site). Find out how many listed items/animals came up in the students' stories, and how this picture of a zoo compares to the zoos in the students' experience. Carry on with your lesson.

Although this particular approach won't work for all the pictures in previous issues of the magazine, plenty of them illustrate an activity or place, such as the church, the farm or the building site, and should have parallels in the students' own experience.

*The next Try It Out will appear on 5 September 2011.