Drawing or writing self-portraits is a classic activity for the beginning of the school year when teachers are getting to know their pupils and vice versa. But how can it be adapted to mask-filled classrooms in the Covid era? Nathalie Legendre tested a masked self-portrait activity in collège.
Mme Legendre teaches in Collège Barbey d'Aurevilly in Rouen. She tried this sequence with her three 3e classes. The pupils followed the instructions on a crafts video to create a portrait folded so that the face is first masked but can then be opened to reveal the bottom half. As well as the comprehension of the video, an additional language element was asking pupils to find positive and varied adjectives to define themselves on the unmasked portrait.
You can see the masked version of 3e5's portraits above, and here are the unmasked versions:
You can see the other classes' work on the collège site.
It would be possible to use video with lower-level classes, with lower objectives for oral comprehension. The presenter shows everything she is doing in detail, which helps pupils follow. As well as the work on adjectives, it's a good revision of parts of the face.