ESL drawing activities – Pair work
These pair work speaking and drawing activities usually end up with some funny results. They involve speaking in the form of describing a picture, listening, and of course, drawing.
To introduce the exercises, make a similar rectangle on the board. on the left of the shape write left, on the right, write right. Add as many prepositions of place as you think is useful. Generally, you will want to include – top, bottom, middle, and corner. If you do this activity with photographs or different pictures you may want to add foreground and background.
Next, draw some objects inside the rectangle. You can draw anything, I usually put a few trees, a sun, a person and a few animals in the demonstration picture. Once this is done it is time to ask students about the picture. The aim here is to get them familiar with describing a picture and using prepositions.
Example questions might be “What is in the top right corner?” or “Where is the sun?”. Continue like this until you feel the class has grasped what is needed. Also quiz the class about the objects with questions like “How many trees are there?” and “How tall are the trees?”.
When you pair up the students make sure they sit opposite each other or set the exercise up so they cannot see each other’s worksheet. If they can see their partner’s worksheet they will just copy it and the whole activity is kind of pointless. When the work isn’t copied you find some hilarious results at the end when they compare their pictures!
The first ESL drawing activity is a little easier than the second one. You may need to teach a few nouns before conducting this activity. Words such as – axe, van, cabin, tent, chimney, rainbow and smoke.
The second set of worksheets involve colour if you want to add that to the exercise. Otherwise, everything works fine if you just print them in greyscale.
Some words you may need to teach before conducting this pair work activity are – bucket, seeds, feed, umbrella, shell, palm tree, starfish, and overalls.
ESL prepositions drawing worksheets
For a similar but easier activity have a look at the ESL prepositions drawing worksheets. On these handouts, the instructions are provided and students can just read and listen without forming the directions themselves.
