English Conversation Lesson #4 - Picture Conversations

I was so happy with my lesson last night!! The best part about the lesson is that each student was speaking English for about 45 minutes straight! The topic was on "Helping."

Warm Up: "Do a good turn daily"
I wanted them to discuss with their partner a time when they helped someone recently. I intended for them to turn to their partner and start talking, but I found that they wanted to start the conversation with a question and the students had a hard time formulating that question. Even I had a bit of a struggle to find the wording. This is what I came up with on the spot. It isn't the best, but it worked: "When did you help someone recently?"

After discussing for a few minutes, I asked if there were any questions. For example, things that they wanted to say, but couldn't. I got a few questions about how to say "summer homework." I could have spent more time here and talked to each of the eight students about the good turn they did, but I wanted to move on to the lesson.

Lesson: Picture Stories
I prepared about a dozen clip art pictures of helping that had two people (either one helping the other, or two people working together). I found the pictures from the Microsoft Office Image Search and a Google Image Search.

I introduced the task by showing all the students the dozen pictures about helping. I then explaining that they would talk about:
1) What is happening in the picture?
2) What happened before the picture?
3) What happened after the picture?
4) Write a dialog between the two people.

I then went to each pair, starting with the lowest in ability, working my way (discretely) around the room to the pairs that are higher in ability, and let them choose the picture that they wanted. I believe that choice in education is powerful.

I then asked them to talk with their partner about the first question: "What is happening in the picture?" I then gave them a few seconds to start their conversations and I circled the room helping students. After a few minutes I asked them to talk about the second and third questions. I again circled the room helping each pair.

I loved that every group took some artistic liberty with the picture. For example one group with the picture of two people planting a tree, decided that it was the anniversary of their town and these people are going to plant lots of trees so during cherry blossom season everyone would come to see these trees and it would make their town famous. Another group who had a picture of a daughter helping a mother with cookies decided that the mother's mother in law was coming to visit.

After the groups had discussed the three questions above and created a context and story with their pictures. I then challenged them to write down a dialog between the two people. The lower ability groups wrote some very simple dialogs and the more advanced groups wrote some more complicated dialogs. It was great.

Conclusion:
Again, I loved that they were talking in English and discussing for about 80% of the class. There was also a lot of critical thinking that was required and they did a great job with it! I am so happy with how this lesson went.