Images are perfect for breaking the routine and entertaining your class. Stories are woven within their shapes and colors.
A picture can be read like a written story with minimal resources, making the outcomes accessible to all your students. With the right questions, you will teach your students how to interact, engage, and read these visual stories. By using images, you encourage learning through class discussions, and you enable multifarious cross-curricular bridges.
Here is how a simple image can be turned into a brilliant lesson plan:
| Learning objectives: To be able to empathize with a character. To write expanded noun phrases to describe a character or a scene. |
| Starter: Ask students to look at the picture for 2 minutes without speaking. |
| A- Image comprehension V-I-P-E-R-S (Find out what VIPERS stands for) NO WRITING Teacher asks the following questions: (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Summary) R(retrieval): How many characters are in the story? There are 4 humans and 1 creature (mammoth). I (inference): Where does the scene take place? How do you know? The scene takes place in the North/North Pole/in a cold place. Proof: snow/ice/winter clothes. The scene takes place in a cave. Proof: ceiling V (vocabulary): Find a word that best describes the four characters’ feelings. Dazzled, thrilled, excited, amazed, baffled, mesmerized, enchanted, surprised. Worried, scared, petrified. E (explanation): What happened to the mammoth? The mammoth was frozen alive; I know it because it is a prisoner of an ice block. The mammoth was frozen alive, I know it because it is a prisoner of an ice block. P (prediction): What will the four characters who discovered the mammoth do next? Any answer that suggests what they will do concerning the mammoth. E.g., they could try to free the mammoth by melting the ice; they would try to sell what they found, cook, and eat the mammoth. They will likely find a way to melt the ice to free the mammoth. |
| B- Hot seating NO WRITING Activity 1: Divide the class into 2 groups. Group 1: discuss and answer the following question: What does the picture make you feel? Group 2: answer the following questions: If you were one of these characters, what would you be feeling? What could they be saying to each other? Have both groups share their answers. Activity 2: The 4 characters who discovered the mammoth are back home, sitting in a press room, ready to talk about their discovery to the many journalists (the rest of the class). Choose 4 students. Each will impersonate one of the characters standing in front of the mammoth. (optional: a scientist, a reporter, a local guide, and an adventurer). You might have to start the questions; if so, here are some suggestions: How did you discover the mammoth? What did you feel when you found it? Where was it? Were you looking for a mammoth? If not, why were you there? What was your role in the discovery? What have you done with the mammoth? Where is the mammoth now? Will you look for more? |
| C- Spag (grammar) The word “mammoth” is a noun. We can see it and touch it. Can you name three other nouns in this picture? Cave, ice, people, humans, adventurers, snow. We can describe the mammoth using adjectives. Which adjectives could be used to describe the mammoth? Enormous, gigantic, titanic, woolly, hairy, brown, frozen, dangerous, scary. Let’s use the adjectives gigantic and scary to describe the mammoth. The gigantic, scary mammoth This is called an expanded noun phrase. The adjectives tell us more about the noun. Because it does not have a verb. It doesn’t need a full stop or a capital letter. Activities: Rearrange the words to make expanded noun phrases. Write the answers in your book. Use commas to separate the adjectives. The deep, dark, and gloomy cave The cold, icy, and translucent ice-cube Winter-dressed, reckless adventurer Write your best-expanded noun phrase about the mammoth, the adventurers, and/or the cave. Share orally. |
| D- The science connection Look at the picture with the mammoth. Is the scene’s temperature on the left side (red) or right side (blue) of the following number line? Why? The temperatures are on the left side (red). It is below zero. The mammoth is inside a giant ice cube. Water freezes (becomes solid) at zero degree celsius. Above zero, water melts (becomes liquid). Students might suggest the temperature is on neither side but on zero for the same reasons. Mammoths were megaherbivores. What does that mean? They fed on grass/shrubs/vegetation. Look at the image where sabertooth tigers confront mammoths. What adaptive traits do you think mammoths have developed to protect themselves from predators? Size/height/weight/strength Long and sharp tusks Trunk Thick skin |
| E- Homework Reading comprehension: Read the following news report Million-year-old mammoth DNA discovered by scientists in northeast Siberia. And answer the questions. |
| Million-year-old mammoth DNA discovered by scientists in northeast Siberia Previously, the oldest DNA sequenced from about 780,000 to 560,000 years ago. By Julia Jacobo February 17, 2021, 5:02 PM Scientists now have evidence that mammoths were roaming the earth more than 1 million years ago with the discovery of the oldest-dating skeletal fragments ever found.  An international team of researchers recently found molars from three mammoth specimens in northeast Siberia, two of which they determined are more than one million years old through the age deposits from which the teeth were collected from, according to a study published Wednesday in Springer Nature. Scientists now have evidence that mammoths were roaming the earth more than 1 million years ago with the discovery of the oldest-dating skeletal fragments ever found. An international team of researchers recently found molars from three mammoth specimens in northeast Siberia, two of which they determined are more than one million years old through the age deposits from which the teeth were collected from, according to a study published Wednesday in Springer Nature. One specimen, named Krestovka, is approximately 1.65 million years old, while another named Adycha is around 1.34 million years old and the third, Chukochya, is 0.87 million years old. The authors estimate that the specimen named Krestovka diverged from other mammoths around 2.66 to 1.78 million years ago and was ancestral to the first mammoths that are believed to have colonized North America 1.5 million years ago, according to the study, while the specimen named Adycha is one of two lineages in eastern Siberia that later gave rise to the woolly mammoth. “This DNA is incredibly old,” said Love Dalen, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm. “The samples are a thousand times older than Viking remains, and even pre-date the existence of humans and Neanderthals.” The oldest previously sequenced DNA was from an ancient horse found to live between 760,000 to 560,000 years ago, collected in 2013, according to the paper. In July, a well-preserved woolly mammoth skeleton was discovered in a lake in northern Siberia. Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, but small groups may have survived longer in Alaska and off the Siberian coast.  Mammoths appeared in Africa about 5 million years ago and then colonized much of the northern hemisphere, according to the study. |
If you want to read more about using images to teach inferences, this is where you want to go:
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