Related to what I had been writing in the last post, now
I want to write about techniques and materials to teach. We know that we cannot
base our lessons only on a textbook because we need supporting materials. We can
use different resources from different books and websites. We can also create
our own materials but “You don´t need to add more stress to your life by trying
to create brand-new materials”, how H. Douglas Brown says in his book Teaching
by Principles..
Techniques include
all tasks and activities performing by teachers and students during a lesson.
As material we can use
for example PICTURES.
There is a phrase that says, ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ (Anonymous). So, pictures are excellent resources for English language teaching. Through pictures, students can predict what the topic of the lesson or the activity will be about. In this case,the idea is to activate students’ background knowledge, which is essential for the construction of new knowledge. Teachers can foster students’ interaction by resorting to games or in order to fire students’ imagination, teachers can use pictures as a guide for students to create or tell a story based on just a single picture. Pictures are usually used to break the ice by asking students to describe what they can see, especially to encourage beginner students to speak in class.
There is a phrase that says, ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ (Anonymous). So, pictures are excellent resources for English language teaching. Through pictures, students can predict what the topic of the lesson or the activity will be about. In this case,the idea is to activate students’ background knowledge, which is essential for the construction of new knowledge. Teachers can foster students’ interaction by resorting to games or in order to fire students’ imagination, teachers can use pictures as a guide for students to create or tell a story based on just a single picture. Pictures are usually used to break the ice by asking students to describe what they can see, especially to encourage beginner students to speak in class.
In conclusion,
pictures can be exploited in several ways in English lessons.
Example:
Fingerprint trees
If we are
in September/ October, a month of changes because a new season arrives, there are some
useful tips to carry out an art project on this topic with small children.
You can
show them pictures like these:
You can prompt them to describe what they see and talk about seasons: What´s
the weather like? What colour is the sky? What colour are the trees? What´s
your favourite season, autumn or spring? Etc.
Later on,
you can draw a tree trunk with bare branches on a big piece of paper. Show it to
the children and ask, What´s missing here? (leaves/flowers) and encourage them
to paint with their fingers.
Finally you
can divide the class into small groups and assign a different season to each. The
groups who got autumn will dip their fingers into yellow, orange and brown to
paint on the ground leaves. The groups who got
spring will dip their fingers into green, red and blue to paint leaves and flowers.
You can
also, for example, play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as background music while the
children are painting. This will create an atmosphere for them to
express themselves creatively. Another extra idea is that this Fingerprinting
activity can be done outside.
What do you think about "pictures"?
