This is a very simple drawing activity which may be especially effective for teaching structures such as the present perfect, present continuous, and ‘going to’. It works well for elementary upwards. I have used YouTube as a way to exhibit my students’ work and let them revisit the language in an engaging way:
Procedure for creating flashcards
- Give every student in the class a little piece of scrap paper.
- Divide the class into two groups.
- Tell Group A that you would like them to draw a picture of a woman buying flowers. Tell Group B that you would like them to draw a picture of a man buying flowers.
- Tell everyone to give their flower buyers a name and add these to their drawings.
- Tell everyone to think *why* their flower buyer is buying flowers. Importantly - students within each group should work together to ensure that no one in the same group thinks of the same reason. Students should write their reasons on the reverse sides of their drawings (sentences should start: “[Name of flower buyer] is buying flowers …“
.. . 
. . .
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Procedure for language study
- Collect in all the flashcards.
- One by one, show the flashcards to your students and elicit who drew what.
- In each case, dictate the sentence (or sentences) on the back of the flashcards to your students. Make corrections, or alterations to the language whenever necessary. See examples below.
- During the dictation, keep a note of all the corrections/alterations you make by writing all of the sentences on a single piece of paper.
- Allow students to compare what they have written. Then allow them to correct their work by passing the piece of paper with the corrected sentences around the class (NB While students are comparing their work, you could run off to the photocopier to make a few extra copies of your sheet to pass around)
Some example language
In each of the cases below, the sentences in bold were written by students on the back of their flashcards. The sentences in italics were the altered versions that I dictated. In some cases, no changes were made.
- Maria is buying flowers because she is fallen in love.
- Maria is buying flowers because she has fallen in love.
- Susan is buying flowers to make perfume.
- Julie is buying flowers because her best friend have had a baby.
- Julie is buying flowers because her best friend has had a baby.
- Kate is buying flowers for herself because she is very important for herself.
- Kate is buying flowers for herself because she is very important to herself.
- Sarah is buying flowers because it’s birthday of someone important.
- Sarah is buying flowers because it’s the birthday of someone important.
- Lucas is buying flowers because he was unfaithful.
- Lucas is buying flowers because he has been unfaithful.
- Miriam is buying flowers because she has bought a new flat and needs to decorate it.
- Rick is buying flowers because is the Marga’s birthday.
- Rick is buying flowers because it is Marga’s birthday.
- Manolo is buying flowers because has invited to the fest of flowers.
- Manolo is buying flowers because he has been invited to the flower festival.
- Jeremy is buying flowers because he is going to visit one friend who is at the hospital
- Jeremy is buying flowers because he is going to visit a friend in hospital.
- Mr Flower is buying flowers for going to a funeral.
- Mr Flower is buying flowers because he is going to a funeral.
- John is buying flowers because it is his mother’s birthday.
- Fran is buying flowers because he like eat it.
- Fran is buying flowers because he likes eating them.
- David is buying flowers because today is St Valentine’s day and it’s a present for here girlfriend.
- David is buying flowers for his girlfriend because it’s St Valentine’s day.
- Ana is buying flowers because her mother has died.
Follow up possibilities
- Find out if men and women buy flowers for different reasons.
- Use the sentences to make gap fill exercises to revisit the language the next day.
- Ask students to translate all the sentences into their own language(s). Then ask them to translate them back into English from memory.
- Scan or take photographs or the flashcards and put the images on a class blog / use Windows Movie Maker to make a video montage.