Colouring with Words (Calligrams)

This lesson was inspired by a post I saw on the Lines, Dots and Doodles blog. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be a great drawing activity for ESL students. 

Basically, instead of just colouring in a picture as normal, this activity requires the kids to write words (in English) to colour in their pictures. Even better, they usually have to write the words over and over again which is great spelling practice.

While it would certainly be possible to get students to create their own drawing from scratch, I decided to give them a customised colouring page to work with instead. I thought this was a safer option for ESL students because it enabled me to control the content of their pictures - the colouring page format ensured that the kids didn't draw pictures that were too complicated or that contained a lot of vocabulary that they weren't familiar with.

I did this activity with my Grade 2 class and all of the kids managed to finish colouring at least one picture during the 40 minute lesson. Here are a couple of examples.

The complete lesson plan is available by clicking "Read more".

1. Draw a large square shape on the board.
   Inside it draw a basic animal shape (like a cat) as well as simple objects like a sun, horizon line and a tree.
   Underneath the square, draw 6 horizontal lines.
   
   
2. Ask the kids what they can see in the picture
   The children supply the words – such as “tree”
   Ask “How do you spell tree?” - the children call out the letters
   Write “tree” on one of the lines under the picture
   Continue to elicit other words
   If the students miss naming anything in the picture, point to it and ask “What's this?”
   
   
3. Now say something like “It’s time for colouring with words”
   Ask “What colour is the sun?” The children answer “yellow”
   Then write the word “sun” numerous times on the sun in yellow chalk
   Continue colouring in the other parts of the picture in the same way
   You may also want to choose some students to come up and help to colour the picture on the board
   
   
4. Tell the kids to take out their greylead pencil
   Distribute the colouring pages to the students and tell them to write the names of the objects that they can see on the lines underneath the picture (point to the example words written on the board as visual clarification of what you mean)
   
   
5. Encourage the kids to ask “What's this?” and “How do you spell....?” as they identify and list the objects in their pictures
   You may want to write up a new list of words on the board to assist the students
   
   
6. When the students have finished writing up their list of words, CHECK THEIR SPELLING before giving them permission to take out their colour pencils and begin colouring
   This is something I didn't do very well during my lesson and some of the kids misspelt words and then coloured their pictures in with the wrong spelling. This was super annoying as they often wrote the word incorrectly many, many times. Even so, I still made them go back and amend each and every one of their mistakes.
   
   
7. Give early finishers the option of:
   • colouring in another picture (until the photocopies run out)  
   • creating their own colouring with words drawing using plain A4 paper