A fish, a blue fish, a fast blue fish…
Teaching June 15th. 2009, 10:46pmMy foreign coworker shared with me a quick, low-prep activity that his students love to do. I thought it was very clever, and I stole it for my classes. Here is how it works:
Take a paper. Fold it in half three times. You should end up with eight panels. In one of the panels, start with a simple noun, and draw a picture to represent it. For example, write “A fish” and draw the simplest fish imaginable. Then, in the adjacent square, write something like, “A blue fish”. Draw the same thing, except the fish is now blue.
As you go along, add additional adjectives to each panel, making a simple “fish” into something like a “Swift, fat, happy, rich, blue fish”. Each time the picture changes to reflex the new changes. It’s important the iterations build on something simple and very vague to begin with, because otherwise it’ll take to long and the students won’t be able to draw the different things.
This activity is great for students just getting a handle on all the different adjectives they know. It’s easy to get “A fish” out of a group of students. With enough prompting, you can even get something like “A small blue fish” out of a kindergarten class if you build it up enough, but getting this sort of response without asking for it is very hard. Once students realize you can stack adjectives onto nouns to become ever more descriptive, their answers in class can be a lot more varied and fun.
I tried this in class, and my last “fish” answer was “A big nosed, fat, rich, sleepy blue fish is delicious,” and I drew the fish on the plate. The students all started with different nouns and worked from there. Their results were pretty outstanding. I think I’ll copy this activity a few more times.
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