Art Memory

Here is a great activity which I learned from Anne Marie Chase (Senora Chase) - it is called Art Memory. It can be found in her and Andrea Caulfield's new book Proficiency through Play (page 155), as well as here on Senora Chase's blog. As a result, I will not rehash the entire list of directions - refer to the blog post or to page 155 in their book.

I have a particular Latin 1 class which gets rather squirrelly when given free time, so to fill time, I did Art Memory, and it went very well! The gist is that you project a picture with lots of activity going on, give students 2-3 minutes to look at the picture quietly in order to take in as much as they can, then take down the picture and ask them questions in the target language about the picture (Senora Chase projects the questions). Students write down their responses in the target language based on their memory of the picture.

My Experience

Since this was my first time doing this (and I did not know how this rather squirrelly class would respond to it), I had AI create an image based on some targeted vocabulary words from these past 12 weeks:

Because I was trying out this activity for the first time, I gave students 3 minutes to write down any notes in English - again, with my squirrelly class, I needed for them to do something; sitting quietly is not their thing. I also told them in English to refer to the people in the picture as mother, son, and daughter so that we all were consistent with naming the people and so that I did not get boy or girl as responses. After that, I took down the picture and did a quick 6-question version. The six questions which I asked orally (I did not project them) were:

1. Quis Oreos fert?
2. Quis est tristis - filius an filia?
3. Quid mater consumit?
4. Estne filius parvus?
5. Quis Doritos consumit?
6. Quis non est laetus?

Observations

1. My students indeed were quiet during the 3 minutes! Maybe it was because of the novelty or because they had to focus?
2. This is a great listening/writing activity and a different way to ask questions in the target language about something.
3. In addition, this is a very good guided, sheltered output activity, because it is causing students to output/retrieve the target language response from their internal language system.
4. Students told me that the activity was actually very easy, since they had notes. BUT at the same time, they found that having the notes in English slowed them down when responding to the question, because then they had to translate the answer into Latin for their response. Instead, they would have preferred to have written their notes in Latin! And these are my squirrelly Latin 1 students! Anne Marie's original version does not have students write down anything but rather rely on memory, so I will try that next time.
5. Next time I do this, I will have AI create a picture which has a lot more action and details going on.
6. Like in Anne Marie's blog post and book description, when students gave me their response, I narrated in Latin how the picture depicted that response and added some details of my own to further deliver more input.
7. Anne Marie's blog and book write up has some variations of questions to ask and some great extension activities to do with this in order to get in more input, so check out her blog post or page 155 of her and Andrea's book!

This one is definitely a keeper - thanks, AnneMarie!