Picture Prompts

1. 1. PREVIEW the sites and choose the specific pictures you plan to use for your lesson / activity. (The activity can be the basis for an entire lesson or used as a shorter activity within a lesson.)

*NOTE: Some pictures may not be appropriate for certain ages, skill levels or religious sectors. 

1. 2. Decide on your language focus for this lesson / activity. In order for your students to participate and succeed, they must have the necessary language skills and vocabulary. Create activities that are at their skill level, or even below. Choose pictures that are appropriate for the maturity level of your class.

   3. Demonstrate and give clear instructions as to what is expected. How will the activity begin and end? How will they know that they have succeeded? 

   4. Encourage pair or small group work and circulate to listen.

   5. Provide positive feedback for any efforts made to speak in English and use of the targeted structures.

   6. Provide a means of self-assessment (a simple printed form or googleform) to encourage student awareness of their own progress and participation. Students MUST experience success or they will not participate.

Here are some basic prompts that can be used to promote speaking.

• Wh questions:

  • Who? (Who is this person?)

  • What? (What are they doing? What do they have? What are they saying? What are they looking at? What is their problem?)

  • When? (When did this happen?)

  • Why? (Why are they here in this place? Why are they sad/happy?)

  • Where? (Where is this? Where are they going? Where were they before?)

  • How? (How will they solve their problem? How will they reach / open / find…?)

NARRATION:

• Describing what they see, what is happening, what people/animals are doing, what people are wearing/seeing/thinking/feeling.

JUSTIFYING:

• How do you know? 

• Giving reasons for what you think

• Explain

PREDICTING:

• What will happen next?

• What happened before?

• Possible outcomes.

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS:

• Comparing with your own experience (how is this different/the same?)

• Do you feel this way? ...do this? ...Have you ever seen...? 

• If you were this person / in this situation...

• What does this remind you of (from your own experiences).

CONTEXT:

• Where do you think this picture was taken?

• Why was this picture taken? When? For what purpose?

Working in pairs and small groups can reduce stress and add authentic motivation for communicating in English.

Conversations in Pairs:  

• Choose a picture and ask your partner to tell you as much as they can about it, then swap roles.

• Describe items or scenes and partner guesses what is being described.

• Use the characters and scenes in the picture to create an original conversation.

Small Group Challenges:

• Students find as many words/sentences as they can related to their image and then share with the class.

• Students ask each other questions about what they see or think about specific items or scenes.

• Students create a vocabulary list from the picture and use those words in a given structure.

Storytelling: Practicing impromptu narrative

• Print out pictures and place face down.  Choose a picture and tell the story of the image in 1 - 2 minutes.

• Start a story and pass on to continue.

• Using the same image, each group member tells a different story.

• In small groups, tell and extended story using a group of pictures.  Start the story with one picture, then the next students turns over the next picture and continues.