WRITING ACTIVITY

This activity is intended to help students write simple texts about their house or another house look at a work of art and write about it.

AIMS:

·         Description.

MATERIALS:

·         Picture to be projected.

·         Hand out photocopies to each student.

DEMO SUBJECT:

·         English.

ALTERNATIVE SUBJECT:

·         Art.

·         Vocabulary for any subject.

TIMING: 30 minutes.

PREPARATION:

·         Find or download a reproduction of one of the Van Gogh´s paintings, The House.

·         Find out how much it is worth now in local currency.

PROCEDURE:

1. Show students the Van Gogh’s painting. Tell them that the artist was a painter called Vincent Van Gogh and that although his paintings are very popular today; he was very poor all his life. Also, tell them how much this painting is worth now.

2. Elicit the vocabulary they can see: window, door, garden, path, roof, tower, etc. You could also teach woman, sky, etc. Check these are useful words for your class.

2. Draw a table on the board similar to the one below and write in the nouns in column 5.

1	2	3	4	5
				Windows Door Garden Path Roof

4. Elicit the colours they can see in the picture and encourage them to make pairs of nouns, for example, red roof, green garden, etc. and write the colours in column 4 next to the correct noun.
5. Remind students that when it is about describing the existence of something, it can be said: There is (there´s) / there are. Write there in column 1 and is / are in column 2.
6. Add a / an in column 3 if the noun is singular or some if it is plural. Alternatively, you may wish to add numbers in this column, for example: There are two…..

7.    Now ask students to think about their own house and write sentences related to it while referring to the table above.

Example:

1	2	3	4	5
There There There There There	Are Is Is Are Is	Some A A Some A	Blue Black Green Yellow Red	Windows Door Garden Paths Roof

VARITATION:

Another column can be added before the one about colours. Elicit some other adjectives to describe some parts of the house, for example: big, small, pretty, etc. Encourage students to follow this model when writing about their own house. Teach or revise prepositions so that they can write a more detailed description of Van Gogh´s house on their own house.

Example:

1	2	3	4	5	6
There There There There There	Are Is Is Are Is	Some A A Some A	Big Small Beautiful Wide Enormous	Blue Black Green Yellow Red	Windows Door Garden Paths Roof

FOLLOW-UP 1:

Students with a high level of English will be able to compare their house with Van Gogh´s.

SOURCE: RELLY, V. Writing with children. 2009. Oxford.

Made by: Cristina Muñoz, Pablo Pérez.