Classroom Activity

ELL Beginner

Use the following artworks and activities to build your students' comprehension, speaking, and writing skills.

Shown from the lap up, a woman with peach-colored skin sits leaning sideways against the back of a wooden chair with her head tilted to our left on her long neck in this vertical, stylized portrait. The painting is done mostly with areas of mottled color outlined in delicate black lines. The top of her head and her left elbow, on our right, are slightly cut off by the edges of the canvas. Her copper-red hair is parted in the middle and puffs down and around her hears. Her elongated oval face and delicate features are simply drawn. Pencil-thin, nearly straight, grayish eyebrows float above almond-shaped eyes entirely filled in with black. A faint gray line forms her elongated nose. Her small rose pink, pursed lips are slightly darker than the faint blush on her cheeks. Her jet-black, long-sleeved dress has a high waist and a wide, diaphanous gray collar at the rounded neckline. Her left elbow, on our right, drapes over the top of the spindles making up the back of the chair so her hand rests near the gray collar. Her other arm rests by her side. The background is a foggy swirl of sage green and elephant gray. Two faint, thin, parallel, horizontal gray lines that run across the background may suggest a baseboard.
Amedeo Modigliani, Woman with Red Hair, 1917, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.176

Language

Writing Activity: How would you describe the mood of the woman in this painting? What do you think she might be thinking? Write a few sentences from the point of view of the woman. Use the descriptive word cards (PDF 34KB) as a starting point.

Writing Activity: What nouns, verbs, and adjectives can you list in looking at this painting? Using the Nouns-Verbs-Adjectives worksheet (PDF 34KB), write as many words in English as you can think of, then write more words in your native language. Work together as a class to translate the words not written in English.

Speaking Activity: How would you describe this woman? Who do you imagine she was? Is she young or old? What puzzles you about this painting? Do you like it? Why or why not? Use the descriptive word cards (PDF 34KB) as a starting point.

Speaking Activity: What words can you think of to describe what you see in this painting? What desserts do you like to eat or make for happy times and celebrations? Sketch your favorite dessert and then describe it to the rest of the class.

Writing Activity: How would you describe the girl in this painting? How would you describe the dog? Complete the I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB), taking on the perspective of either the dog or the girl in this painting. Alternatively, write down one or two sentences describing what either the dog or the girl is thinking.

Download

I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB)

Nouns-Verbs-Adjectives worksheet (PDF 34KB)

Descriptive word cards (PDF 35KB)

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