english4theworld teachers' centre image bank

general teaching tips

The teaching tips here are just a few of the ways you can use the image bank pictures with your learners - and ALL the ideas can be used with ANY set of image bank pictures.

For tips relating to particular image banks click specific teaching tips.

These teaching tips are not complete lesson plans and are not given in any suggested teaching order. They are just quick explanations of presentation and practice activities you can use with the pictures.

To use these teaching tips with a class, choose which image bank you would like to use and print out a set of the pictures.

ALPHABETICAL ORDER

Put learners into teams of three, and give each team a set of 10 (or more) different pictures. You may need to make photocopies of the set of pictures you choose to ensure you have enough. Explain that this is a team competition. Each team have to put all their pictures in alphabetical order as quickly as they can. The fastest team to do this correctly are the winners.

FORCED CHOICES

Pin up one different picture on each of the four walls of the room. Ask learners to each choose one picture and stand by it. Avoid giving your learners any rationale whatsoever for making their choice, even if they try to force you to - leave their reasons for choosing completely up to them. When they have decided and are standing by their pictures, ask them to explain to the people in their own group why they chose this picture and not the others. Allow a few minutes for this exchange, then pair learners from different groups and ask them to explain why they did not choose the same picture as their partner. Finally, with the whole class, invite them to share any interesting (strange, funny etc) comments they heard.

GUESS MY PICTURES

Tell your learners that you are holding pictures of 10 different vegetables (for example) in your hand. The class have to guess what they are by calling out the names of different vegetables. If they guess one of the vegetables in your hand correctly, you will place it down on the table. Their aim is to make you lay down ALL the pictures in your hand. Give clues to help them guess any remaining pictures in your hand.

NAME MY WORD IN 2

Ask one learner to come to the front of the class and choose one of the pictures. Explain that they should describe their item to the class in as much detail as they can to help the class guess it. The class are allowed only 2 guesses to discover the word. The aim of the learner with the picture is to help the class achieve this.

QUICK FLASH

Using each picture in turn, elicit the name of the item from the class. Supply the word if no-one knows it, and get the class to repeat it, focussing on correct pronunciation. When you have worked through all the pictures, take each one, and 'flash' it to the class for 1 second only. Your learners should call out the name of the item.

TEN QUESTIONS AND THAT'S IT!

Choose a learner to come to the front of the class and give him/her one of the garden pictures. Make sure the rest of the class cannot see the picture. Explain that the class have to discover which garden picture the learner is holding by asking questions - but they can only ask 10. After that, the game is over. Begin the activity, and count down on the board how many questions the class have used up. If you wish, demonstrate the activity first with the class by choosing a picture yourself, and coaching them to ask suitable questions. During the activity, you may also wish to keep a note of any errors in their questions for follow-up language work.

How have YOU used the image bank pictures with your classes?

If you would like to suggest other ways to use them with learners, send us your ideas and we will publish them here.