A designer lessons ESL lesson plan developed by George Chilton

Lesson Aims

This is a quick activity aimed at encouraging discussion and speculation. Materials-light,  for adult ESL learners

Stage one – Description

Project or distribute the image. Ask your students to study the picture and answer, in writing, the following three questions:

• What is the focus of the photograph?
• What appears to happening in the city?
• Is the photograph surprising in any way?

Stage two – Speculation

Put the students in groups of 3 or 4 and ask them students to briefly compare answers.

Next the group must speculate in order to find an explanation for the picture and plot out a sequence of events that lead the couple to be where they were, doing what they appear to be doing, in a riot.

Stage three – Presentation

They should prepare to give their explanations to the rest of the class – in the form of a spoken story. They should not write their story word for word, but use their plot points to guide them. Each member of the group should speak for the same amount of time.

Optional Follow-up for more advanced students

Play the following video (from about 30 seconds in) and ask the students to take notes and summarise what really happened in the photograph. You’re likely to have to play it at least twice.

You should get the students to re-tell the story in stages – do this by asking questions in order to elicit the sequence of events, here’s a few to get you started:

Why were Alexandra and her boyfriend Scott on the street?

How did Alexandra get hurt?

Did people think the image was real?

NB – It may help lower level students to write your questions on the board first so they are able to focus their listening.

Designer Lessons by George Chilton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Creado a partir de la obra en designerlessons.wordpress.com