Tip of the Month

Both teachers and students like visuals – pictures, flashcards, posters – because they are motivating and memorable.

Story making

Level: Intermediate +
Time: 40 minutes
Focus: Writing a story for people to read
Visuals: One set for each pair containing five unrelated pictures of the same image-type (i.e. all drawings; all colour photographs)

Procedure:

1. Ask the students to get into pairs. Give each pair a set of five pictures, which the other students should not see.
2. The pair decide on the story which links the five random pictures. They should write it down as a rough version.
3. As they work, circulate, helping with language (and ideas if absolutely necessary) and checking the rough versions.
4. When they have finished, they can write up the story as a fair copy.
5. The sets of pictures are now displayed. Give each pair another pair’s story to read and ask them to decide which set of pictures illustrates it. They should keep a note of their decision, and exchange stories without saying anything.
6. This continues until they have read (almost) all the stories and decided which sets of pictures go with each of them. There can then be a whole-class pooling of ideas, as each pair explains the ideas for their story.

This activity is taken from “Visual Impact” by David A. Hill (Longman, 1990).