📸 Spark Conversation with Two Awesome New Picture Activities! 🖼️

Hello Cool English Teachers! 👋

It's time for our weekly dive into new, exciting resources to liven up your English classes! This week, we're bringing you two fantastic activities that use compelling visuals to boost vocabulary, comprehension, and speaking skills for your ESL students. Get ready to watch your students engage!

1. Picture Q+A: Video Clips for Instant Learning! 💡

This brand-new activity is designed to immediately capture your students' attention! Instead of static images, Picture Q+A uses a variety of incredible, short (1-2 second) video clips that are fun and memorable.

How to Use It in Class:

1. Select a Picture: Students choose a short video clip from the selection (e.g., Berry, Cozy, Grace, etc.).

2. Choose a Level: They pick Level 1 (easy) or Level 2 (hard). The best part? You can switch between levels at any time, making it flexible for mixed-ability classes!

3. Watch and Describe: After watching the clip, encourage students to describe what they saw. What details can they notice?

4. Explore the Resources: The activity offers several tools to deepen understanding:

   • Show Vocab: Get definitions for key words related to the image (great for building vocabulary!).

   • Show Questions: Three questions prompt further discussion.

   • Show Answers: Three sample answers provide examples of full, correct sentences.

   • Show Description: A short, sample description ties everything together.
     

🔥 Teacher Tip: Use Level 1 resources to introduce the topic and vocabulary, then switch to Level 2 questions to challenge your more advanced students! These highly visual, short clips make learning vocabulary sticky and fun!

👉 Find the new Picture Q+A activity here: https://www.coolenglish.net/edu/categories/picture-q&a

2. What's Going On? 3: The Clue-Revealing Detective Game! 🕵️‍♀️

Our popular "What's Going On?" series is back with its third edition! Inspired by the New York Times activity of the same name, this is a brilliant way to practice critical thinking, forming hypotheses, and understanding context.

How to Use It in Class:

1. Choose a Mystery Photo: Students select a picture that has no caption.

2. Guessing Time: The main task is to answer three questions:

   • What is going on in this picture?

   • What do you see that makes you say that?

   • What more can you find?

3. Reveal Clues: If students are struggling, click Reveal Clues for hints. This encourages them to adjust their initial guesses.

4. The Big Reveal: Finally, click Reveal Caption to show the actual newspaper caption. Compare the students' guesses to the reality!

This activity is excellent for promoting open-ended discussion and practicing the language of deduction and speculation (e.g., “It looks like…”, “They might be…”, “I think it’s because…”).

👉 Check out the new What's Going On? 3 activity here: https://www.coolenglish.net/edu/categories/what's-going-on

We hope these two new activities bring a lot of energy and learning to your ESL classroom this week!

Which of these activities will you try first with your students? Let us know!