✨ New Visual Games to Get Students Talking! Picture Rails & Description Dash
- Cool English
- Nov 3
- 2 min read
Hello Cool English Teachers!
Get ready to boost your students' speaking skills with some awesome visual activities this week. 🗣️ We're launching a brand-new game concept we'd love your feedback on, plus adding new content to a fast-paced student favorite!
🧪 Test Our New Game: Picture Rail Challenge!
We are so excited to test a new activity called Picture Rail Challenge. The whole idea is to use "rails" or "guardrails" to help keep your students' language on track.
How it works:
Students look at an interesting image and are given 8 keywords (like "teacup," "wave," "ornate," etc.). They then have three "Rails" to choose from:
Rail 1: This is the easiest level. It shows a simple sentence describing the image, but with a few words missing. Students use the keywords to fill in the blanks. (Just click the blank space to reveal the answer!)
Rail 2: This rail is a bit more difficult, with a longer sentence and more missing words from the list.
Rail 3: This is the most challenging rail, using even more of the keywords in a more complex sentence.
Why it's great:
This is fantastic scaffolding! 🪜 It's the perfect way to show students how the same image can be described in three different ways, building from simple to complex. It really helps build confidence.
Since we are still tweaking this new game, your feedback is incredibly valuable. Please try it out with your students and let us know what you think!
🏁 New Additions to Description Dash!
Get your stopwatches ready! We've just added two new activity sets to the super popular race game, Description Dash.
This is the perfect warmer to get students talking under pressure (in a fun way!).
A quick reminder of the rules:
Students are shown an image for only 10 seconds! They must try to describe everything they see before the game automatically switches to the next picture. After 6 images (one minute), or at any time you choose, you can stop the game and read a sample description for each image.
It's fast, fun, and often pretty funny to hear what students come up with. 😂 It’s a wonderful way to practice quick thinking and fluency.
We hope these visual activities bring a ton of energy and speaking practice to your classes this week. Let us know what you think of the new Picture Rail Challenge!
Happy teaching!
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