Vintage photos in a modern classroom
01-Dec-2010If you can cope with the slightly risqué title, this blog is quite a fun way to stretch your students’ vocabulary muscles. It contains hundreds of different pictures that you can have hours of fun describing. They are sometimes shocking, often old and almost always mysterious.
It could be fun to start the class with an interesting picture of your choice from the site (easy to print off if you don’t have an IWB in your classroom) and see if students can guess what it is. Alternatively, divide the class into pairs and give out 2 different pictures to each pair, then get them to describe the picture to their partner, who then has to guess what it is. (This could also be played as the yes/no game.)
If you don’t want to use pictures in class then this could make a fun piece of written homework. Tell students to choose an unusual photograph from the site and write a 100 word description of it. Describing objects from the past is, of course, a great opportunity to practise simple past tense and, since it’s never quite clear what’s going on in any of these photos, they also provide an excellent opportunity to practise. For higher level students, it could be a chance to write a longer and more imaginative story.
I’ve listed some MEC resources below that might go well with the suggested activities .
• All levels: Narrative tenses contrasted – Grammar Reference Unit (GRU0031A)
• All levels: Mixed conditional – Grammar Reference Unit (GRU00060A)
• Level 6: Past tenses – Language exercise (MLG001421)
• Level 5: A strange creature – Vocabulary activity (MVA004442)
• Level 2/3 : Irregular past forms – Language exercise (MLG002593)
• Level 1/2: Past simple – Language exercise (MLG002626)
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