Learning English

3 Camera Activities

Dan and Sian talk about 3 classroom activities you can do with a camera.

Watch the video and complete the activity

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Did you like that? Why not try these?

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3 Camera Activities

Give your students something interesting to do with a camera and teach them English at the same time!

Photographer
Perfect to teach or revise body vocabulary and verb collocations and verbs of movement too! After covering the language, put the students into groups and designate one as the photographer (this can rotate). Get the photographer to tell the other students what poses to pull using the language. Then have a class competition for the best photo, funniest, most sombre etc.

What's that?
This is great for teaching or revising verbs of the senses (it looks, looks like, looks as if) and modal verbs of deduction (it could be, it might be, it must be). Put students into groups and get them to go outside of the class and take a photo of something from an unusual angle, so that it is not clear what the thing is immediately. Then bring their photos back and share with the class. The class must guess what the object is.

Photograph Scavenger Hunt
Excellent for general fluency and speaking skills of clarification and justifying your opinion. Give the students categories of photos that they need to take. Broader categories are better so that students can be creative - this will help with the justification. Once they have taken their photos, bring them back and share them with the class. Get them to explain why they took the photo and how it fits the category. Then choose the best in each category.

Collocations Pictures
Get your students to draw common collocations onto paper in order to better remember them. This is an excellent group activity and involves creativity. Students can discuss how best to illustrate each one and the class can compare and choose the clearest. Great idea!

To do

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Get involved

Well, those were just a few ideas that we here at BBC Learning English had, but we know that you teachers out there have lots of fantastic ideas too, and we’d like you to share them with us and everybody else.

If you have a great tip or technique for using a camera, or anything else, please email us at learningenglish@bbc.co.uk. Your email could be posted here on this page, or may even be mentioned in our show.

We are also looking for video tips to include in the programme. In order to do this, please include whether or not you’d like to be included for video with your tip, and we'll get in touch with you. You could be rewarded with a T-shirt for your efforts.

Next

Find out what the objects in Sian and Dan's photos were!