Thinking of ways to explore descriptions of people, their hair, eyes, faces, emotions?
Well why not use this video clip that I was alerted to via Twitter @i100 this morning!
Watch how the portrait of a woman's face has changed over 800 years of painting

How do I think this could be used? Here are just a few simple ways ....

Name the portrait!

Give children target language name cards- 3 per child. Practise and use the target language names of course and then play the video and ask the children to raise the name cards when they see a face that they think suits the target language name.
Now ask the children to work in groups of four and create 12 faces -using facial expressions for the 12 name cards they hold between them. They must introduce themselves using a full target language sentence.
Ask the children to find portraits of characters through the ages that they can label with their target language name phrases and then create their own short videos with portraits and names

Look closely and what do you see!

Practising describing eye and and hair colour?Well then ask the children to write as many eye and hair colours phrases as they can on a piece of paper. The children cut the phrases into phrase strips and one child goes first on the table or in the group to share their phrases with their classmates.
Ask the children to read out the phrase they hold (it could be an eye colour or a hair colour) and tell the group what they think the phrase is in English . Does the person who wrote the phrase agree?
Now play the video and ask the children to watch for a portrait ,where they can see or identify the eye colour or hair colour phrase strip they are holding.They must raise the strip in the air to acknowledge this . Pause the video every so often and see what phrases the children are holding up. Are they all correct ? Do they match the portrait?
Increase the challenge by giving the children pre-prepared phrases which have an eye and a hair colour - the portrait must match both descriptions for them to hold up their phrase strips.

Anticipation Emotions

The clip had the most evocative music and if you watch closely many of the portraits and the music are interlinked, sharing the facial expression and the emotion suggested in the music.
Ask the children to watch some of the video with you and when you pause the clip to suggest an emotion that the portrait is relating to its audience.Either asking children to recall key emotions language or using bi-lingual dictionaries create and English /target language checklist of emotions on the flip chart.
The children can use this checklist as a point of reference for the second part of the activity. This time play part of the clip and conceal the screen from the children and ask them to listen to the music- can they anticipate the possible emotions on the screen when you pause the clip and reveal the portrait , just by listening to the music.What emotion does the music convey? They must tell you this in the target language!

Portrait gallery selfies!

Using photos of themselves and music that they enjoy , can the children generate a portrait gallery of "selfies" with written and read aloud facial descriptions that can be share with the whole class on the IWB?

Take a look at the image! It's a football player .....but who is the person on the inside ?

These are World Cup activities for our Year 4 ,5 and 6 learners in the target language.

Yesterday thanks to @vallesco I received a link to the Daily Telegraph and the football strips for the World Cup teams.

Here's the link

World Cup football strips

Here is the England team and their football strip ...........

......................................................................but what makes them who they are on the inside?

Select some football strips of the World Cup teams! Give each table or group of six children a football strip and a country.

Can the children investigate the countries and the famous buildings, foods,traditions and customs of the country and create a new football shirt of cultural graffiti for France .......

For Germany .......

For Spain...............

Here's my Spanish cultural graffiti shirt .I am certain our children will make them look far more authentic and creative!

The children can use this information to create an informative English presentation about the country and specific cultural aspects to share with the class with pictures etcetra.The t-shirt can act as their prompt as they hare their information with the class.

Now can they create what's on the inside . Ask child in the group to select a team player from the World Cup team for the specific country and on the reverse side of the cultural graffiti shirt

Can they record on the reverse side of their shirt a target language greeting , a name phrase, maybe the town/city the player comes from and characteristics that describe the player (e.g. strong, quick,powerful,fast,brave etcetra)?

Here's my simple example:

Now the challenge is to create a football team of real people not just players . Each member of the team needs to introduce themselves and say their characteristics using the t-shirt as a prompt if necessary.

The class is almost ready for football team presentations . Each group must now decide upon a chant for their country name.

The final presentation will have three parts:

the country and the culture in English / the players and their characteristics in the target language / a final team line up and of course a team chant of the name of the country!

Thanks to @vallesco for the French power point she has posted on light bulb languages to support teachers if they are investigating some of the participating teams in French and want to create their cultural graffiti t-shirts!

French Who is inside the tshirt? ppt

If a picture paints a thousand words ...

World Cup 2 Who is the person on the inside?