This is a fabulous activity for older Primary students, teens and adults which I picked up from Katherine Bilsborough’s session at the recent TESOL-SPAIN convention.

Firstly, ask students to draw the picture below – you could do this as a picture dictation, or project the picture and ask them to copy it.  You can see me in the picture too (I’m eating an ice cream!).

Students also draw themselves in the picture and then do a mingle activity to add more detail to their picture.  For lower levels, this could be, “What are you doing?”  or for higher levels, “What were you doing when the shark attacked?”  Students draw their classmates onto the picture and can then compare drawings, write a news report or report back to the class in whole group feedback.

This is a highly adaptable activity as by changing the original picture, you could use it for a variety of different topics and grammar points, e.g…

• Students draw the playground and pictures of what they can do (What can you do?  I can play tennis.)
• Students draw a house and after the mingle activity, the teacher could say that someone was murdered in the living room, leading to modals of speculation (It can’t have been Tom – he was playing football in the garden.)
• Students could draw an object in a classroom to practise prepositions (The ruler is under the chair.)
• And many more…