Visual Stimuli

          This week I was asked to write a lesson plan. Just like that. No context at all. It was an assignment for the methodology class I'm taking. I could choose the topic, the level, the students. There was no requirement other than being a lesson plan. I chose to plan a lesson about modals of deduction. Modal verbs is a topic that we have to work on over and over.
          For this lesson, I decided to use plenty of visual aid. First a video from cnn.com. The use of authentic material is important, and it is easy to find up-to-date videos. I also use a very nice tool that a friend of mine suggested to me some time ago and I'm finally using it. It is a Flickr gallery.
          As a warm-up the teacher starts with a slideshow presenting a news headline. It says "Airline grounds fleet, stranding thousands." This is a piece of news from cnn.com. Following the headline, students will watch a video in which passengers talk about the situation. The teacher asks the students to think about possible reasons for the situation. Students talk in pairs. After a few minutes the teacher asks for ideas for the whole group and write the most interesting ones on the board.

Modals

This is the video they will watch:

The teacher should choose one reason given by the students and ask: "Are you sure this is the reason for the airline problem?" The student will most likely say no and so the teacher will write a sentence using may, might or could. One possible sentence is The weather may be the problem. The teacher writes some more sentences making sure to use must for the ideas which the students are more certain about. The teacher then explain that must is used to say that you believe something is certain, and may, might, and could, to say that something is a possibility.

Teacher asks the students to work in pairs. They will have to write sentences about the pictures that the teacher will show. They have to use the modals to give possible explanations for the situations in the pictures. Each picture will be shown for around one minute. After students finish, they change pairs and compare their answers with the new partner. The teacher shows the images again and ask for the students' ideas for each picture.

Here are the pictures selected for the activity:

Modals, a gallery on Flickr

          I selected these pictures using a very nice feature of Flickr called add to a gallery. Flickr allows us to create picture galleries and this way we can select the images we want our students to see. It can be used in may different ways. Maybe you can suggest another one!