Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №44/2002

Language about the Senses

Previous sazkills/knowledge needed

The children should have previous experience of sharing ideas and feel at ease with taking part in a class discussion. This activity provides the children not only with the opportunity to extend and deepen their knowledge of language, but also with a considerable degree of excitement, so it is important to stress the rules of listening and taking turns to talk.

Preparation

Try to provide two natural materials for each sense. These should give contrasting sensory experiences, so that the children have a variety of interesting words and descriptions to choose from. For example: touch, a smooth shell and a rough stone, or a smooth pebble and a rough-surfaced shell; smell, a sweet-smelling flower and an orange or an onion; taste, a lemon and some sugar; sound, bells and a drum; sight, two contrasting pictures or photographs.

What to do

Gather the class together in the story corner. Ask each child to look at the person nearest to him or her so that they can tell you the colour of her or his eyes or something about her or his hair. When they have responded, ask them to look (for example) out of the window, at the back wall of the classroom, on the top of the cupboard and say what they can see there.

When they have responded, talk about how we use our eyes. Ask the children if they can think of another word for seeing: looking, staring, vision, sight. Get the children to close their eyes. Tap on the desk with your fingers, close a book with a snap, whistle or sing. When the children have opened their eyes, get them to talk about what they have heard and how they knew what you were doing without looking. Suggest that they close their eyes again and listen to the sounds from outside and inside the school. Establish the idea of listening and look for more connected words, for example: hearing, ears, sounds.

Now ask the children to touch things around them, the carpet, a neighbour’s jumper, their own hair, the skin on their face and so on. Establish the idea of touch and suggest that the children look for words to describe how, for example, the carpet feels: hairy, rough, woolly and so on. Look for more contrasting touch words.

On the board draw eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth and a hand. Establish with the children what senses we use ears and eyes, hands, noses and mouths for. Reinforce the sensory words we use: touch (feeling), sight (looking), sounds (hearing), taste, smell.

Tell the children that you are going to make a group for each of the five senses and that they are to touch, look at, smell, taste or listen to two things. They should try to find lots of sensory words to describe each thing – just as (for instance) they thought of lots of words to describe the feel of the carpet.

Put the children into the groups and give out the contrasting materials to each. Give them five minutes to think about the descriptions before they report back.

When the five minutes are up, get the class back together. Ask the ‘touch’ group to say what they have found: A rough stone, heavy, scratchy (like what?) like my grandad’s chin, bumpy (like what?). Pass the stone round and collect more ideas from the others, always keeping the idea of expanding and exploring their language skills. Go on to do this with the other four groups.

Write some of the new words and phrases on the board beside the appropriate drawing. Ask them to give ideas (from their previous experience with natural materials) of things which will be suitable to go under each label, for example: orange, onion, sugar for the taste box. Ask the children to draw two appropriate items for each labeled sense. Encourage them to express ideas about ‘our wonderful world’ to make a picture; this could be the world as seen from space, or a beautiful natural scene.

Bring the session to a close by talking about our five senses and how we use them to find out about the world.

Suggestions for extension

The children can extend their imagery by thinking, perhaps, of the feel of darkness, the colour of the wind, the sound of bluebells, the taste of holidays and so on. Describe their best ideas into a Senses List poem.

Explore one sense at a time simply looking for contrasting adjectives: rough/smooth, heavy/light, shiny/dull and so on.

Assessment opportunities

This activity offers boundless opportunities for assessment. Can the children use contrasting words and phrases? Can they find more than one description for everything? Can they move on to the more demanding language and imagery?

Display ideas

Make a large five-panelled frieze with collage-type pictures of things we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Print the title, Our five senses, placed above. On the display table, put a basket of fruit (taste), a vase of flowers and bottles of perfume (smell), percussion instruments (sound), and stones and shells (touch).

Performance ideas

Let children from each of the five groups make up a presentation piece which illustrates the sense they have worked on and which uses some of the descriptive words and phrases they have found. For example: I have eyes and I can see the dark sky at night. I have eyes and I can see silver stars lighting up the dark. But (in contrast) I have eyes and I can see the golden sun of morning. I have eyes and I can see the bright blue sky of summer. The sound group could present the following: I have ears and I can hear the deep thunder of the drums... This goes well against a percussion background.