If you’re looking to add some “spice” to your classroom activities, consider using a digital camera. You can bring in your own, or borrow the school’s camera (if you ask, your school most certainly has a compact digital camera it uses to photograph field trips or activity days.) It’s true that many children have a natural aversion to their picture being taken, at least by their teacher they do. I usually witnessed this during the first day of a new semester when my director would go around and take a snap shot of all the new and returning students for the school’s online database and administrative system. The kids knew it wasn’t for even anything as flashy and embarrassing as a yearbook, yet they would still throw hands over their face, run around corners and even hide under desks to escape the flash of the camera.


That isn’t to say these children didn’t like having their picture taken in general, but if you plan to take their picture in school, their acceptance of it will all depend upon the circumstance and how you explain to them the reason why their picture is being taken. If you look at their cell phone, or their friend’s cell phone, you will undoubtedly find dozens of the students’ portraits, usually in goofy, silly poses, which would suggest far more embarrassment then would a simple school portrait. The trick to overcoming this obstacle is to thoroughly explain your activity before hand, perhaps even a class or two ahead of time. If there is still reluctance by a student to participate in having their photo taken, then hand the camera to one of their classmates, preferably a friend, and have them take the photo. In my experience this is the best solution and don’t worry about instruction regarding the camera – although you might not be proficient at using the digital technology, guaranteed the student will be a whiz.   

These are the top 5 ways you can use a digital camera (my choice is Nikon, but any camera will do) in the ESL classroom:

1)    Vocabulary exercises: [You will notice younger children, ages 6 to 10, are less self-conscious than more senior students and will more likely enjoy this exercise] Assign simple action or descriptive vocabulary to each student, two or three words at most – words like ‘smile,’ jump,’ ‘happy, ’ ‘sad’ – then have each student stand at the front of the class and “act out” their given words. Take a portrait of each student. Any photo editing software will allow you to do a quick collage of all the photos. Next class, bring in the photos (two or three 8x10s at most) and tape them to the board. Then have each student match the vocabulary word – printed on a small white piece of paper – to the appropriate picture.  Just make sure you get the approval of your director so you don’t have to spend any of your own money, but most schools have these materials on hand, i.e. photo paper and simple image editing software. Kids love acting out these words and will spend a lot of time laughing at their portraits, especially when posting the vocabulary to each photo.

2)    Descriptive Exercises: The small graphics and animations in textbooks can often leave students, especially older elementary and middle school students, bored and feeling superior to the material presented to them. A stunning landscape or portrait that either you have taken on your travels, or perhaps have come across surfing popular photo sites such as Fotoblur.com or Flickr.com, is a great way to engage the students. This usually works with a photo 8x10 or larger. Have each student a) describe the photo in as many ways as possible for 30 seconds, i.e., what’s going on, what’s the subject, what are the colours, etc. b) use 10 adjectives to describe the photo c) guess where the photo was taken d) ask each student why or why they do not like the photo.

3)    Photo Sharing: Works best with older students, 12-16+, and either a small or large class. Everyone today is an amateur photographer. It’s just a natural progression the ease digital technology has brought to photography. You don’t have to know about film speed, shutter speed or apertures – although you really should- to produce a properly exposed photograph on any compact digital camera set to automatic. You will be surprised at how many of your students are actually quite good amateur photographers. I was also surprised at how good one class of mine was at stop-motion filmmaking on their just cell phones! Bring in some of your travel photographs for discussion. Encourage your students to do the same.  They will welcome the opportunity to change the boring Friday lesson to a forty-minute discussion of their hobbies. This is best done on a laptop set in front of the class to save on the cost of photo printing. If the students don’t have large digital files or in a common file format like .jpeg – meaning they have photos they want to share on their cell phone, which will definitely happen – then ask if they wouldn’t mind passing around the phone so each student can view it. My students had no problem with this activity, but again it’s up to the discretion of the teacher to judge whether their particular group of 14 year olds are mature enough to handle this.

4)    Short Friday Films: Works with older students 12-16+, small or large classes. Most compact digital cameras, and some new Nikon DSLRs, come with the ability to shoot small file sized digital movies. Choose a short activity or game on a Friday afternoon and capture it in a movie. Because of their relatively small file size, these movies are easy to email. Collect your student’s emails and use your school’s email, or if you feel comfortable giving out your personal email to your students, to send out the videos after each class. These movies serve several purposes. First, the students feel a sense of community because they have a record of their class activity they can look back upon and share with friends. Second, that sense of community helps reinforce the positive aspects of class participation, which in turn helps them remember their Friday afternoon classes instead of them just counting down the seconds to run out of class. Third, the student’s parents will enjoy seeing their son or daughter use the English they pay so much money for a year. Keep those mothers happy!

5)    Photo assignments: This also works better with older students. After showing the class some examples of your own photography and leading them in a discussion about photography, their hobbies and what they like to photograph, hand out weekly assignments. These should not be strenuous exercises, but should emphasize the locale where they live. Assignment examples:

-    Famous spots around town (hiking trails, favorite shopping spots, tourist spots)

-    English signs (ask the students to take five pictures of anything written in English they see around town, i.e. shop signs, food menus, t-shirt logos)

Discuss these photos in the next class. These assignments are twofold: first, they are often valuable to the teacher in giving them a greater knowledge of the town or city where they live – many things only a citizen or native would know about; second, it gets the students to talk about and discuss their town or city in English instead of talking about a New York or London they have no experience of except through their Macmillan textbooks.

This is only a small selection of things you can do with a digital camera in the classroom taken from successful activities I have myself done with several classes over the years. Please feel free to comment on any of these activities, make any suggestions for improvement or even suggest your own. Teachers only get better through sharing with other teachers.

Spencer McCall