Using students’ backgrounds and identities to acknowledge and promote their agency helps teachers create a community of learners in their classes where the process of teaching and learning is personalized. It also creates strong bonds among students as they feel accountable, which boosts student motivation, participation in the activities, and retention.

The following lesson plan is a narrative journal assignment for students with advanced English proficiency, but it can be adapted for different teaching contexts, skill area classes, and proficiency levels. I use this in my academic English oral communication courses to train international teaching assistants in becoming effective public speakers. It starts with writing narrative journals and moves to creating and presenting effective presentations.

The main focus of the lesson plan is telling factual stories by using students’ personal pictures to promote their agency. This lesson plan involves students’ backgrounds and identities to create a professional learning community of multilingual, multicultural, and multidisciplinary international teaching assistants and acknowledge the agency of the learners/scholars.

Journal Writing: Describe Your Picture(s) Creatively

Duration: 3 sessions, each 80 Minutes

Language Skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking

Materials and Technology: Laptop (or cellphone), internet, learning management system (LMS), students’ selected pictures, projector

Objectives

• Writing a personal story creatively based on a picture
• Describing a familiar event in writing using descriptive language
• Reading creative nonfiction stories
• Analyzing stories and pictures while thinking critically
• Working collaboratively with a partner/class
• Describing and presenting a story in front of an audience
• Listening to stories and getting to know peers

Outcomes

Students will be able to

• write personal stories using descriptive language.
• read and listen effectively for key elements and supporting details.
• organize ideas to create and present effective presentations.
• present and describe a factual story.
• use communicative resources and strategies.
• use intelligible academic English.
• listen to stories to learn about their classmates’ personal and cultural backgrounds.

Procedure

Session One

Warm-Up

• Bring some pictures (from any resource; see Figure 1 for examples) and ask students to create stories for those pictures.

• Ask students to share their stories orally in groups.

Figure 1. Example photos for students to create stories.

Instruction

• Teach journal writing. For some great tips on journal writing, see “Journal Writing Tips: The Benefits of Freewriting”

• Teach descriptive language and use some examples. For guidance, see “Descriptive Writing – Strategies for Teaching”

• Ask students to select a picture from their social media account or from a childhood album.

Assignment

• Assign students to write a journal entry and tell the story reflected/implied in the pictures by reimagining the time they took that picture. (Because this is a journal-writing assignment, the length of the journals depends on the students’ stories.)

• Ask students to use descriptive language describing the unique features of the picture that reveal an aspect of their identity.

• Assign students to post their pictures and stories to the discussion board on your LMS.

• Ask each student to select a story from their peers’ responses. Each student should post a message on the LMS mentioning their selected story so other students do not select that particular story.

• Ask students to review the Reading the Story handout (Appendix A, .pdf) before they read their selected stories, and then complete the handout as they read.

• Ask students to post the handout to the LMS.

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Session Two

Warm-Up

• Brainstorm some verbal and nonverbal public-speaking strategies, resources, and techniques, such as facial expression, body language, pauses, pitch, volume, and intonation.

Instruction

• Discuss techniques and resources that students can use to speak effectively in front of an audience.

• Share a video of an effective speaker and ask students to take notes about the strength of the speaker’s speaking skills. TED Talks offer great videos for examples, and you can easily find something suitable on YouTube; this video of then President Obama giving a commencement address is excellent, as it models the use of gestures, facial expressions, pauses, and humor to retain audience attention. Show students several minutes of a video and have them watch the rest at home.

• Ask students to use their notes and discuss the strength of the talk and the speaker in groups.

• Ask groups to share their ideas with the class.

Assignment

• Ask students to use their completed Reading the Story handout and prepare a 2-minute presentation sharing the story of their classmate with the class.

• For homework, have students create a Presentation Notecard (Appendix B, .pdf) to practice for their presentation.

• For homework, have students create an electronic poster using the Poster Presentation Template (Appendix C) and post it to the LMS to use on the day of presentation.

• Share and go over the rubric you will use to grade students’ presentation (Appendix D).

Session Three

Warm-Up

• Remind students that they will be graded based on the rubric (Appendix D).

• Ask a volunteer to keep the time for presenters.

Instruction

• Remind students that they have 2 minutes to present their poster and introduce their classmates.

Assignment/Assessment

• Ask students to present their posters (based on the Poster Presentation Template, Appendix C) in front of the class.

• Project each presenter’s poster as they present.

• Grade students’ presentation.

Student Examples

Following are a few examples of student work from my class.

Click each image to enlarge.

Conclusion

This lesson plan gave my students an opportunity to feel comfortable in class and about their personal and cultural backgrounds and express their ideas and feelings. After the presentations, I realized that my students found it less challenging to take a stand and express their ideas. My class turned into collaborative communities that facilitated participation, group work, and growth.

Neda Sahranavard, PhD, is a lecturer and academic coordinator at the University of California, Irvine, Program in Academic English, and an adjunct faculty at South Orange County Community College District. She has a PhD in English language and literature and has worked with multilingual students for more than 17 years. Dr. Sahranavard is the 2020 TESOL Teacher of the Year.