THE SOLDIER AND THE DONKEY (DANIEL MARTÍN)

 

This photo shows a group of soldiers marching on a field. One soldier is carrying a baby donkey on his back. I first saw this photo on Facebook.

There are two versions to the story. You will have to go to the link provided to find out :https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/15/fact-check-photo-soldier-carrying-donkey-algerian-war/5443306002/

Let me share with you first that my students are requested to bring personal headphones with them because this allows me to set up different listening tasks and they can go online with their phones and listen to the material (mostly Youtube videos) at their own pace and with good quality sound, which is important for many students.

So I used an online voice recorder (Vocaroo) and made two voice recordings. Recording A with a description of the photo and one interpretation of the story. Recording B with the same description of the photo and the other interpretation of the story. Students were divided into pairs and were assigned one of the recordings. Then the link was shared for them to access the recording on their phones. They were asked to draw the scene on a piece of paper as they were listening to the recording (which they could pause for time, if needed) and then pair off with another student and retell the interpretation of the story they listened to. So both stories were shared in a nice listening/speaking activity. The students showed their drawings. I elicited answers. Then I displayed on the interactive board (a projector and a screen will be as equally valid) the actual photo and asked about what interpretation seemed to be more credible.

Finally we did some grammar work around the photo, even though grammar was not my main focus. The main focus was listening for details in the description of the photo and listening for general understanding in the interpretation of the story plus being able to understand and retell a story. There was some critical thinking to the activity in the ensuing discussion in plenary mode. The grammar work was based on narrative tenses (past simple, past continuous and past perfect) when telling stories and how those tenses are used in relation to each other.

The level was an Intermediate class (B2, first year to be precise).