Do you really believe that students can learn English by visualising?
"Do you really believe that students can learn English by visualising?"
This is what Roy, one of my Zumba buddies,
asked me last week.
Roy's been fascinated with my work for a while
but he couldn't get his head around how I would use visualisation in my English
lessons. He's a university tutor who believes that relaxation is something that
we all need, let alone students and he didn't need much convincing as to how
powerful my visualisation-based lessons were.
If that's a question that you've asked
yourself, then you are in luck because today I am sharing one of my students'
favourite lessons which includes visualising.
In my blog post Visualisation- the perfect way to stimulate your students'
imagination, I explain
that I use this mindfulness tool for the following reasons:
- to practise specific vocabulary
- to create a particular goal,
- to bring sensations,
- to go back to past memories,
- to help my students explore themselves
So without further ado, here's my lesson plan THE
LITTLE BUTTERFLY.
Step 1:
Show pictures of a butterfly and a caterpillar
and ask the students to name the two insects. What do the butterfly and the
caterpillar have in common?
Step 2
Ask the students to match the words which
rhyme. If they are not familiar with the task, explain that “words that have
the same sound or end with the same sound” rhyme.
For example- cat-mat, bite-kite
Download Student
Handout here.
Step 3
Tell the students to read the poem about the Little Green Caterpillar and fill
in the gaps with the rhyming pairs of words.(See Student Handout)
For instance, Line 2 rhymes with Line 4.
You can find the original poem here. It is written by the
British poet Josie Whitehead. Yes, my students and I love her poems. :)
Step 4
The poem has been turned into a song. You can
download it from the poet’s website. Use the link provided in Step 3. Play it
and let the students check their answers.
Step 5
Hold a discussion using the questions below:
1. What doesn’t the caterpillar
like eating? What does he want to eat?
2. How do you think the
caterpillar feels when he says: “How do I get to see more of this world?”
3. Why does the caterpillar
want to be like the butterfly?
4. How does the caterpillar
change at the end of the poem?
5. Where do you think the
butterfly will fly to first?
Step 6
Let’s visualise
Explain to your students that they’ll take the
little butterfly from the poem on a journey. Ask them to sit comfortably,
relax, close their eyes and listen. If they haven’t done a visualisation
before, say that they need to listen carefully and follow the guidance of the
voice. Explain that breathing is important so illustrate how they need to
breathe in and out at the beginning and the end of the visualisation.
Here is a link to the visualisation that I've
created for the purpose of the lesson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3XWH5JJkcI
After you play the visualisation, ask the
students how they feel.
My students love visualising.
Not only do they find it extremely calming but they are able to practise target
vocabulary in a way which wakes up all their senses.
Ask some students to retell the butterfly’s
adventure from the park.
What details do they remember
from it?
What colour was the butterfly?
What was the girl doing in the
park?
What were the children doing?
Where do they think the two
butterflies will go next?
Step 7
At the end of the lesson put the students in
pairs and tell them they have to prepare a dialogue between the two butterflies
from the visualisation. If you are running out of time, you can assign this for
homework.
Happy visualising,
Marusya Price