Extended lesson plans: Guardian Photo of the Day

EXETENDED LESSON PLANS

Guardian Photo of the Day

This is a preparation free lesson plan for learners above a B1 level. It uses the Guardian photo of the day website. It’s a lesson I’ve done more than once with a class because they enjoyed it so much and it was so productive,

1 Focus student attention on the topic of photography with a lead-in discussion.

2 Refer students to the Guardian Photo of the Day website. Explain the concept. Share the link with learners so they can access on their phones.3 Put students into small groups of 3 or 4.

4 Tell students they should first individually choose a shortlist of their favourite three photos from the website. Tell them to make a note of the country where the photo was taken for reference.

5 Tell students they now have to work as a group and have a group discussion as to what their group choice of three photos would be. This involves lots of persuasion and the use of different skills to get others to change their minds. Tell the groups they should now rank their photos into an order from 1 to 3.

6 When all groups have chosen their photos, collate them into a table on your lesson whiteboard. This is a great way to visually show what each group has chosen.7 Compare the decisions students have made. Very often, students will have chosen some of the same photos albeit in difference places. This can save later discussion time.

8 Tell students there will now be a whole class discussion to make a group decision. Tell students to firstly make a point to justify each of the choices.

9 Let the whole discussion unfold. After the first round of presentation is completed, appoint a chairman whose job will be to control the flow of the discussion. When I did this with a group before, they very naturally used all the language they had studied in a previous lesson like “compromise”, “find middle ground”, “reach a concensus” etc.

10 Give feedback to learners on the language they’ve used during the discussion.

11 Round off the activity with a writing activity where students write a description of one of the photos in their writing portfolios. What you’ll notice is that the quality of this writing will be much higher because of the all the preliminary language use.