Classroom Activity

ELL Intermediate

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

We look slightly down onto a bed on a wide platform, dressers, tables, chairs, and other furniture extending into a deep, pink-walled room in this nearly square watercolor painting. The paint is mostly opaque and flat, and contours and outlines are drawn in graphite. The room has a wood floor and an inset tray ceiling, also pink. Windows with burgundy-red frames and pale pink curtains line the far and side walls. We will start at the bottom of the sheet and move up, which also brings us back in space. A moss-green table set with a tray of colorful perfume bottles, a hairbrush set, dishes, pincushion, and cosmetic powder is closest to us in the lower left corner. A table with pale wood grain extends into the room in the lower right. On it are notes, a black clutch purse, spilled ink under an inkwell, pen, key, coin purse, and perhaps a gray scarf. Continuing along the right wall are a pink dresser holding figurines and knick-knacks, low shelves with thick books, and a desk with a green chair facing away us in the far corner. Black and white portraits are displayed on the desk and on a shelf above it. Back closer to us and farther into the room is a long, blue table with turned legs. It holds boxes and sheets of paper with writing. Beyond it are a blue chest with its unpainted wood back facing us. That chest holds a vase of paint brushes and a tray of bottles. A floor easel stands just beyond it, and an overstuffed and slightly crumpled brown easy chair faces the easel. Along the left wall beyond the green dresser are the bed on the wood platform, which is wide enough to hold an old-fashioned cradle telephone, lamps, books, cushions, and a basket with papers. Pillows, pages with writing, and a furry blanket cover the bed. A pale blue, two-door cabinet is in that far corner with a square mirror hanging above. A blue cradle holding what might be a black sleeping mask is at the foot of the bed; two rectangular boxes, perhaps suitcases, are near the pink dresser to the right; and close to them is a U-shaped appliance, perhaps an old-fashioned foot massager. Views out the windows look onto white-walled houses with gray roofs or peach-colored houses with terracotta tile roofs.
Perkins Harnly, Bedroom, 1940, 1935/1942, watercolor, pen and ink, and graphite on paper, Gift of Albert Lewin, 1947.1.24

Language

Intermediate ELL Activities

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

Writing Activity: Close your eyes and make a mental list of the things your bedroom, your closet, or a drawer. Think of two objects that mean a lot to you. Write a short paragraph about them in as much detail as possible and explain why they are important to you.

Reading Comprehension/Writing Activity: Read information about the life of artist Arshile Gorky. Then complete the I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB), taking on the perspective of either the boy or the woman in this painting.

Speaking Activity: Interview two classmates with the following questions about this painting: Have you ever eaten a fig? Do you recognize the type of bread shown in the painting? What favorite foods would you add to the table? Do you eat bread every day? Have you ever baked bread? What foods do you know how to make?

Writing Activity: Focus on one person depicted in this painting. How would you describe that person? What is he or she doing, feeling, thinking? Complete the Step Inside worksheet (PDF 47KB) to imagine what your chosen person is thinking and feeling.

Shown from the knees up, a woman with smooth, pale skin and rosy cheeks wears a satin gown and densely pleated, wide collar in this vertical portrait painting. She stands with her body angled to our left but turns to look at us from the corners of her luminous brown eyes. She has curved, black brows, a straight nose, and her strawberry-red, bow-shaped lips turn up in a slight smile. Her honey-brown hair is tightly curled under an elaborate pearl, gold, and feather headdress in the shape of a bouquet of flowers. The pearl earring in the ear we can see rests against the lace-edged ruff, which presses up against the back of her head and extends to the width of her shoulders. She wears a long-sleeved, champagne-white satin gown trimmed with gold and jewels. A white satin cloak with amber-gold lining falls open from the elbow of each sleeve. The cuffs are edged with layers of narrow lace, and she holds a mostly closed fan in her right hand, farther from us. Both arms hang by her sides. Behind her head and shoulders, cranberry-red drapery billows down from above over forest-green marble columns. Light shines from our left, illuminating a brown pillar and mantel behind the woman, along the left side of the canvas.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.60

Speaking Activity: Imagine that Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, depicted in this painting by artist Peter Paul Rubens, can look out from the painting. Where do you think she is? What might she see? What could she hear that might distract her? What could she smell? What might she like to eat?

Speaking Activity: Look at this painting for a few minutes and write down five sentences in your native language describing what you see. Then share and compare your responses with a partner in English.

Shown from the lap up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a goldenrod-yellow dress, sits reading a small book, facing our left in profile in this vertical painting. The deep, scooped neckline of her rich yellow gown is edged with lace and decorated with a mauve-purple bow at the bust. Her chest is covered by sheer white fabric under a ruffled, pleated collar. The ruff is tied at the back with another mauve bow, and a ribbon of the same color ties up her chestnut-brown hair. She has a delicate nose and rosebud mouth, and she tips her head down to read the book she holds in one hand. She sits against an oversize pillow streaked with pale lilac and deep rose pink. Her left arm, closer to us, is draped over a railing that extends across the width of the canvas. The background behind her is streaked with tan and muted teal blue. A vertical strip of light caramel brown along the right edge of the canvas suggests another wall against which the pillow rests. The artist’s loose, lively brushstrokes are visible throughout.
Jean Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl Reading, c. 1769, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Mellon Bruce in memory of her father, Andrew W. Mellon, 1961.16.1

Speaking Activity: Look carefully at the young girl depicted in this painting and imagine how she feels. What would you would like to ask her? Write down five questions and then exchange with a partner. Answer each other's questions, and act out the conversation.

Speaking Activity: Look at this painting for three minutes, then turn your back and make a list of objects, colors, and shapes in the painting. Work in pairs and compare your perceptions, then turn back to the painting to see what you remembered and what you didn't.

Download

Step Inside worksheet (PDF 47KB)

I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB)

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