NATURAL DISASTERS (VIRGINIA DE LA FUENTE)

CLICK ON THE PHOTO: to watch the pictures

Photo source of the mouse: @shagal_sajid on www.unsplash.com

I would use the photo I chose with a B2 level class to work on the topic of environment, natural disasters, which is always on our B2 syllabus . It might also be used to work on the topic of feelings, asking students What they think they might be feeling at that time and to revise language to express possibility / probability.

Another objective would be to practise narrative tenses when they try to reconstruct the story.

First of all I would project the photo and ask them some questions such as where they think the photo was taken, what happened, what are the ladies looking at and their thoughts. I would use the technique Jamie explained on the first session using story seeding so that students can start recreating the piece of news. The phrases / information I would provide students with would be:

Turkey´s Aegean coast

Keep away from coastal areas Debris Tsunami October 30th Flooding Magnitude collapsed

After giving them some time to work in pairs / groups in order to reconstruct the story behind the picture, we would listen to their stories and see how close they were to the real piece of news. Later I would use the technique of gap-filling either with the phrases / words provided or with other interesting ones to widen their vocabulary on the topic so that they can have the real piece of news and compare it to the piece of news they created in pairs/ groups.

To make the oral text for them to fill in the gaps I would use the piece of news from:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54749509

And I will adapt any language which might be higher level than B2 and of course I will adapt the piece of news to the required length in this kind of activity. This activity can later on lead to a discussion about natural disasters.That way we will have combined listening, writing and speaking.