sand

Here are some ideas for using this close-up image.  It was taken on a beach near Cádiz last summer.  Sand works well for my teaching context as we all live near the beach. Most of my students were brought up near a beach, and sand is a great starting point for exploring a lot of memories, sensations and personal anecdotes.  Other close ups might well work better for you.  Autumn leaves can be very suggestive, as can snow, or rain on a window.  And freshly cut grass works really well in the UK on intensive summer courses.

Speed writing

1 First ask the students to look at the photo and decide whether it’s an aerial shot or a close up and justify their answer.  Ask them to talk about exactly what they can see and how they imagine the “bigger picture” (if they opened out the image from the close up, what would they see?).  Use this stage to input new vocabulary and structures as needed.

2 Explain that you are going to ask the students to write continuously for five minutes without any planning, and without any particular task, just using the image as a starting point.  If you have never used speed writing activities with your students before, you may want to model twenty seconds or so on the  board.  Just write whatever comes to mind ( eg. I’m looking at an image of some sand. It looks warm and soft. The sun is shining on it. There are footprints….)

Sharing texts

3 Students write for exactly five minutes.  They then compare what they’ve written. But before they do, elicit the names of the five (traditional) senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and ask them to look at each other’s writing and identify any evidence of any of these five senses.

4  Students discuss their texts in pairs or small groups, picking up on similarities and differences and then open it out to the class as a whole.  Make notes on the students’ thoughts and ideas under the five headings of the five senses. This stage offers another good opportunity for working with new language and vocabulary, helping the students put their thoughts into words.

When I used this image in class a few days ago, we ended up discussing a recent police raid on a bingo session in a local women’s social club, and talking about the feel and the sound of sand as it runs through your fingers.

Follow up

If you want, you can ask students to choose one of the ideas or stories that came up and expand on it, either as a simple text, or finding their own images and sharing them with the class in the next lesson, by email or on a class blog or wiki.