Age & Level: B2- C2
Class Time Needed for Activity: 90 minutes total, divided as follows:
Speaking Activity: 30 minutes
Spark Video Activity: 60 minutes
Preparation Time:
TOTAL: Ten minutes plus time to learn how to use Adobe Spark if not familiar with the technology.
Determine how long you wish for this exercise to take on total class time. Add or subtract how many examples you want for prisons around the world. As well as how long you need to spend on review for the students to retrieve previous knowledge from lessons.
Objectives of the Activity:
SWBAT properly use the word “incarceration”, and be able to describe what mass incarceration means to someone who does not know the subject.
SWBAT use descriptive words to best describe settings on the theme of incarceration, and take these descriptive words to associate different living environments around the world. As well as receive a good idea of different prisons around the world.
SWBAT fluently provide a series of statistics within a short amount of time on a video.
Resources Needed:
Images that are provided below, as well as a resource to obtain more examples.
Speaking Activity
Introductory Blurb:
Using the listening exercises that dealt with mass incarceration previously, these next activities are going to put the student’s learning into practice. You want to make sure that each student knows that they are going to be asked to speak and give different descriptions, and that there are no “wrong” answers, as long as the word choices are relevant and agreeable to the picture descriptions. We are going to focus on 4 different countries mainly. However, feel free to expand on the countries that you wish to focus on. A link in “References and Further Reading” has more examples of the different prisons in the world.
Procedure:
Considering the first objective, we want the learners to be able to understand again what mass incarceration is. I want to use the practice of drilling that the book described, but take a different twist on it. First start out with giving the idea to everyone on what exactly mass incarceration is. Present the dictionary definition. Then allow students to give descriptive words that they learned from the listening exercises, have them speak as long as they like, and try their best to give different ideas and not copy what others have already said. NOTE: Throughout the whole activity, the plan is to bring this activity back, and have students repeat their answers from this exercise. Being repetitive is taking the skeleton of a drilling exercise, and will make sure to really solidify what mass incarceration is to learners. Refer back to this exercise every 5 or 10 minutes depending on how well you manage time.
I provided some images from around the world’s different prisons. Introduce the different countries' names, so students are able to get somewhat an idea of what countries we are going to focus on. Break up the class into groups, if you have a larger audience, but if you have a smaller audience, then you may give them individually to students or in pairs. Have the students take time to look at the images and find features that really stand out to them, and prepare exactly what they want to say. Go around the room and have the groups/participants discuss what they see on these images, of course without allowing others to see. Do not allow them to guess just yet. Having students practice formation of sentences to be the bridge of translation, makes good practice to become more fluent in English. Finally after all four groups have successfully given their presentation, refer back to #1 and repeat the exercise to solidify the first objective.
Lastly, have the students go back to the images and try to guess what image is what country. Go back around the room and have the students repeat again what they described but in different words, having a general idea of what each group said, making synonyms for their already stated descriptions, is good practice again for formation and originality. One by one, have students guess until they are able to properly pair the right prisons with the right descriptions. After guessing from trial and error, allow the rest of the class to see the images and allow discussion on how accurate the descriptions were. And once again, refer back to #1 and repeat this exercise for the last time to make sure the students are for sure understanding mass incarceration. This will be the last repetition and the end of the activity, however allow discussion for as long as you desire.
Caveats:
Learners are going to have a hard time speaking and really getting out of their comfort zone, so be mindful of this, and lend a helping hand to those who struggle finding the right words.
The repetition can become annoying and boring, so you are really going to have to play into the factor of “you should know this” idea. For example, if you ask a student what incarceration is again, and other students that are listening seem to look like they are losing interest, use that to your advantage and ask them if they can come up with a new description of the idea that has not been said already.
Options: This exercise can become a whole class group activity rather than an individual/pair work. Alternate the skeleton of this activity to make it better for your audience, if you have big personalities in the class, making this activity a giant group activity, will help you keep everyone focused and control.
Spark Video Activity
Introductory Blurb: Using Adobe Spark, this activity will help students develop fluency by recording a description of one of photos used in the previous activity. For this activity, the students will be divided into groups of 5 or 6 to create a video. Each student must complete a voice-over for one photo, regardless of the size of the group.
Procedure:
Divide the class into groups of 5 or 6 students. Each group will produce one Adobe Spark video with each student in the group voicing over a different photo.
Give each group a set of the following photos: a photo of a prison in the United States, a photo of a prison in a South American country, a photo of a prison in an African country, a photo of a prison in a European country, and a photo of a prison in an Asian country.
Each student should take one photo to research.
Have each student research the following pieces of information for their photo.
Name and location of the country.
Population and per capita income of the country
Rate of incarceration in the country per 100,000 in population.
One other fact about the prison system in the country. This could include any recent news, or a description of prison conditions.
Once the students have written a script for their photo, they should practice saying the script aloud several times, with the goal of increasing fluency.
Each student should present all of the information above in 40 seconds or less. The tight timeline increases fluency, but accuracy is also important.
Have each student upload their photo and voice it over in Adobe Spark.
After all of the students have voiced-over their photo, play each video for the class.
Options: This activity will take some time because students will need to learn how to use Adobe Spark. If time is short, the photos could be uploaded in advance to Adobe Spark. Alternatively, each student could describe their photo in 40 seconds or less to the other students in their group, eliminating the need for a video all together.
Caveats: This activity assumes that each student has access to a computer. If this is not the case, the information to be researched is easily available online and can be printed out in advance.