3rd year ESO

1. WORKING WITH PICTURES

1.Working with images from the Guinness World Records,by Beatriz Santos

Grade level: Bilingual 3rd ESO students

Time: about 40 minutes

Context: This class took place during the 7^th period, as bilingual students have an extra hour two times a week.  They are usually very tired, so I try to choose activities based on images, pictures, songs, role plays and the like, that mainly focus on oral skills. This activity was useful as it helped revise superlatives and question formation.

Warm up

Firstly, I asked students what they knew about the Guinness World Records and I copied some of the words they used on the blackboard (some of the words they mentioned were competition, International, achievements, extreme, controversial, funny, weird, crowd, personal best, museum, and so on).

Activity

I showed the pictures and I gave students some time so that they could guess in pairs what records the individuals hold. After five minutes I stopped the exercise and students shared their ideas with me. I wrote the key language on the board.

Then, in pairs, students had to write down questions that they would like to ask if they could meet the people in the pictures. They had to write a minimum of two questions for each picture.  While students were working, I monitored the class and offered help with the grammar.

After some minutes, I explained that I needed one volunteer that would act as the person holding the Guinness Record while the rest of the class would be reporters. I placed a chair under the picture and students asked their questions while the volunteer answered in any way he/she wanted. I encouraged students to come up with more questions once they asked everything that they had prepared, so that we could move on to a more spontaneous speech. I repeated the process with each image but I asked for different volunteers.

Follow up

I asked students to think about and write down the record they would like to hold. I asked some volunteers to read aloud what they had written.

Personal reflection

The class was very dynamic and students were engaged in the exercises as they thought some of the Records were just hilarious.  They were rather imaginative with the questions although they needed some help when writing them down.

The pictures used in class:

1.      The athlete Nancy Siefker who made it into the Guinness World Record for the farthest arrow shot with the feet.

2.      André Ortolf who holds the record for the farthest distance to blow a pea (7.51 m), although he has two more Guinness Records: one for the fastest 100m in clogs and the other one for the fastest 100m in ski boots.

3.       Akino Obata, who has the largest collection of plastic food in her apartment (she has more than 8,000 items)

4.      Takahiro Ikeda, who is a professional BMX rider  and holds the record in ‘megaspins’ in the world (he made 83 spins on the bike in just one minute and when spinning, the only thing that can touch the ground is the back wheel)

2. Using pictures, by M. José Sánchez

Using Pictures. Another interesting activity with different (and higher level) students (3º,4º Secondary for adults)  was talking about the picture of the prison turned into a hotel.

They saw the first picture in class and had to think as homework what that building is and what it was in the past. They had to prepare a short convincing speech in small groups about what they thought it was.

The best defended opinion and the group which was right about the building would get  better marks in this activity (though all effort was praised).

After the defence of their opinions we watched the rest of the pictures of the hotel (rooms, hall and restaurant) and they suggested a search on the internet to know more about the place, the city it was located in, etc.

It turned out to be a motivating activity and nearly all of them got to speak at least a little (in their groups or in front of the class).

3.OWL ATTACKS HAWK, by Francisco J. Tobal.

-  bilingual group of 10 students.

First, I showed the picture on the screen and I told them to look at it, focusing not only in the foreground, but also in any detail they could appreciate in any other part of the photograph.

Then, I told them to write as many nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as they could think of related to what they were seeing. In order to do that efficiently and without feeling stressed, I had previously given them little pieces of paper so that they wouldn't feel overwhelmed thinking that they had to write a lot. I gave them 3 minutes to write those words.

After those 3 minutes, I asked them to create a very brief story about what was happening in the photo using the words they had just written. I told them that two or three sentences were enough. They had 2 minutes to do that.

Finally, in a minute, they had to write a headline summarizing their story.

Most of them had problems finding adverbs. Actually, only two girls wrote one adverb, "suddenly", while the rest of the students were not able to write even one. So, this activity was also useful to find out some areas of grammar which might need further practice[

. Apart from that, everything worked and the students gave many different answers. The following examples show the result of their work and their imagination:

A frightening bird: There was a woman at a bird's exhibition. The bird was so frightening and the woman so scared of it that she started to shout.

A vulture in problems: There's a woman who liked vultures a lot. One day she found a vulture with a broken wing. She cried and a woman behind her called a vet. The vulture recovered from this problem.

A bird attacks its owner: A woman wanted to show off with her new bird, but the animal didn't do anything. When she was coming back to the zoo, the bird attacked her and she felt bad because it happened in a public place.

The ill woman and the man laughing: The woman is ill and tired of carrying a bird with a rope. A man who is talking on the phone sees her and starts laughing.

The activity was a success. All the students took part in the activity showing interest and wanted to share their stories and headlines with the rest of the group. At the end, they all said that they had enjoyed the activity. However, it has to be mentioned that the same activity would probably have not been so successful in a different group, with a higher number of students, some of which lack interest or have a very low level of English