Lessons with ESL Action Photos
Projects for students to work on:
Verb Tense or Grammar Practice Create a document featuring the pictures and student writing. Students download a picture and write an appropriate sentence or sentences next to the picture depending on the tense or structure being practiced. They can fill up a page or as many as the instructor directs. (Resize the pictures to fit several onto a page.)
Example: To practice Present Continuous Tense
The
students are going down the stairs.
See an example
To practice Simple Past Tense
The students went down the stairs.
To practice Subject Pronouns
They went down the stairs.
The possibilities are endless. A nice feature to this practice is that it minimizes student discomfort with new vocabulary by allowing students to select the vocabulary that they are most comfortable with using. You can have students devote the entire page to one grammar point or have them write two or more sentences for each picture demonstrating a transformation.
Create a multimedia slide show Transform the exercise into a PowerPoint slideshow by creating pairs of slides with the same picture and a transition from one slide to the other in which the target vocabulary or grammar changes when the slides change. For a demonstration click on the link to the right of the second slide below.
Students can record their own voice and have the recording of their voice play when each slide appears. If the second slide is an exact duplicate of the first slide and “no transition” is chosen, when the slides change after the chosen number of seconds, it will appear as if only the words in red replace the words in black.
Essay or Paragraph Writing Students choose one or more pictures and write a paragraph or short essay describing typical activities in the classroom or school or what they see in the picture.
Make a List Students choose several pictures and make a list of things to do the next day.
Make a Graph Students choose several pictures and using Excel create a simple graph illustrating how many times a week they do each of the activities or what percent of the students in the class do an activity on any given day.
Labeling Students copy an image into Paint and label different parts of the image (see example).
Ideas for Teachers: If your classroom is equipped with an LCD projector, you can do many of the above activities with the class in an interactive manner. Flash a single image on the screen and ask the students to describe the picture, or say the appropriate sentence. You can also print out Bingo game cards, or create written exercises using the photos.
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