Last monday, my mates from ECO II and I attended an interesting workshop developed by Mathilde Verillaud. She's from the United States and she's staying in Rosario for a year, attending different conferences and giving talks about an important aspect teachers and students teachers must take into consideration when entering the English Classroom. I am using one of the titles of her presentation because it really called my attention.
She talked about how to use a newly teen fashion action (Selfie) as a fast track to boost students' motivation, using students' contexts to help them learn English. She taught this workshop in China and told us what the project was about.
First, as she did, I will introduce the definition of 'Selfie' to all of you who may not know the term.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, a Selfie is: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.
In 2013, 'Selfie' was chosen as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionary, and The Guardian and The New Yorker agreed with this.
Just in case you still have doubts, this is a selfie!
You can also take a selfie of your shadow using the sun or water.
And you can take 'Selfies' together with your friends of family.
Here are two of the most famous funny 'Selfies' we know...
According to Mathilde, this tool of the Y generation will help students learn about themselves and will help teachers connect to their students by facilitating this self-discovery process and speaking their visual language.
As a teacher, you can start by introducing some photography vocabulary and show famous selfies to your students to discuss their impression of the photographers from their self-portraits.
You can also brainstorm with your students the infinite possibilities of taking a 'Selfie', for instance, the different contexts that they can show and what would make the 'Selfie' unique and reflect their personalities. And now, you can ask them to take their own 'Selfies' for this project, including objects that show something about themselves.
Then, you can practice acitivities with the 'Selfies', but first, you MUST set some general rules if you intent to play a game with students or if you ask them to describe their mates' selfies. If not, some could use negative words or comments to describe some mates' selfies and it can be a bad experience for them. Remember we are dealing with teenagers, it's a difficult age and their inhibitions are high so as to protect their ego, you have to be careful and encourage them to show some aspects of their personalities by taking selfies and create a cheerful environment. You MUST also talk to students about the use of social media and posting their selfies on the web.
Some of the activities proposed by Mathilde are:
1) Higher order ranking questions: describe what they see, what is going on, what is the person thinking or feeling, etc.
2)Gallery walk: exhibition in the classroom. 10 minutes to go from photo to photo and write descriptive sentences. The group with the most correct descriptive sentences wins.
3) Description games: one students orally describes a picture to his/her partner. The other students says the same thing in a different tense, or in the negative.
4) Every photo tells a story: pick one photo and write a quote about the person in the photo. Pass the photo to your left and repeat the action.
5) Let's draw: two students leave the classroom. The rest of the class is divided in two groups and is given the same photograph. Each team has to orally describe the photograph to the student who was outside the classrom in order for he/she to draw. Both students who left must draw following oral descriptions. The student who draws more similar features to the photograph wins.
6) Writing activities: a descriptive text, dialogue or poem about the photo.
I wanted to share some details of this very interesting and useful workshop of Mathilde with you! I hope you have the chance to attend some of her workshops.
Thank you very much,
See you soon.
