An ESL Picture Activity

An ESL Activity That Costs Nothing

A picture like this would make a great story.

The real enemy of any ESL Curriculum teacher is boredom. When your class becomes bored with your lessons, they stop learning. Once that happens, they lose enthusiasm and stop coming to class. To combat this, we devised a motto that we found very useful: keep them guessing! If the students were never quite sure what would happen in their class, they would come because of curiosity, and join in with enthusiasm. Here is an activity you can make yourself, or if you are short of time, you can download a free one.We found this activity was always enjoyed. It involves pictures cut out of magazines. Often you can find old magazines that no one wants. If not, usually you can pick up old magazines for next to nothing in thrift stores or second hand stores. Cut out unusual pictures, you will need 10 or 15. Old photography magazines are good for this, because they usually have some very unusual pictures in them. Next make captions for each picture. Computer labels are very good for this. The caption should form the basis that the students will be required to use for a story about the picture. Of course, if you can think up crazy captions for the pictures, it will make the activity much more fun for the students.

Where is she going in such a hurry?

Here are some sample captions: a picture of a speeding car – “Why did this man steal his father-in-law’s car?” A picture of two men carrying a big box – “What are they going to do with the body in the box?” a picture of camels crossing the desert – “Why did our neighbors go here for a holiday? Is there something strange going on?”

Divide your class into groups of two or three. Give one picture to each group, and tell them to make a story about the picture, using the caption that you have provided. We suggest giving them a time limit for this, one that is generous enough for them to finish, but not too long. (Without a time limit, you will usually find that one group will take a very long time to finish.) When each of the groups has finished their story, ask a spokesperson from each group to show the class their picture and read their story.

To add to the learning, the teacher can go to each group as they finish their story and correct any errors. In this way, the small group has a chance to see the correction, and the large group hears the correct English from each group.

We kept the pictures for years and used them over and over. We always found this activity to be lots of fun.

For teachers who are busy, we have made a complimentary book that you can download, with the pictures and captions ready for use.

The PDF password to open the book is: roy

For your free book, click below>>

picture-activity-bk

We have a few other related blogs. See also:

http://successfulesl.com/Blog/a-fun-way-to-deal-with-prepositions/#more-761

http://successfulesl.com/Blog/finishing-the-lesson/#more-520