Personal info press calls and photo shoots.

Take a look at the Hans Holbein painting of "The Ambassadors". Art makes a great  device to develop transactional language in language learning across all stages of learning. Some of you may have already used my 3D Art ideas.  and you may like to try my 3D Art whispering galleries activities too.

Art and languages can lead to simple spoken and written  descriptive sentences and can lead to creative extended spoken and written sentences and text often with a touch of  drama and languages too.Here is how....

Personal Info Press Calls

• Either as fact or fiction simply ask the children/ pupils to gather information about the character(s  in the painting(s) that you share with the class .So ask the children to investigate names,ages,birthdays, where characters live, languages spoken, feelings and emotions, role within a family or profession , likes and dislike .Ask the class to create  draft fact files.
• Now create simple transactional language chains.Ask simple questions to different children /pupils and build up the information as a class in a transactional language chain about each charater in the picture.you can do this as first and secind person singular or as a third person singular question and answer focus.Maybe  with more advanced pupils you could ask them to make comparisons of the characters' personal information.
• Add personality by adding voice, actions , dramatic effect.
• Ask the children/pupils to work in pairs and build dialogues to investigate the characters personal information and characters. With different stages of learners you can obviously build different levels of language structure and content.

Photo Shoots

• Look at the objects and elements that have been added to the painting(s)."The Ambassadors" is a perfect example of how objects within a painting suggest and give political and social commentary to the painting. 
• We can use this technique at every stage on language learning.
• Simple: ask children to label objects with nouns in the target language and replace objects with word art - so the written form of the target language noun in the shape of the object as a  flap stuck over the object
• Not as simple: ask children to label objects with nouns and adjective describing what the object looks like in the target language and replace objects with word art - so the written form of the target language noun and adjective are within the shape of the object as a  flap stuck over the object.
• More challenging: ask the children to think about why the object is in the painting.Can they add the nouns and adjective describing what the object looks like in the target language and replace objects with word art - so the written form of the target language noun and adjective are within the shape of the object as a  flap stuck over the object- but this time also add on the reverse side of the flap a comment.The comment should suggest what the object really wants to tell the viewer of the picture

.....and finally why not convert the written to a spoken record and add sound files to the paintings  using the Tinytap APP