Teaching secondary
school aged students

Posters

What and Why?

At various place in CES (particularly in the Activity units), students are required to produce posters of their ideas. The production of posters is a useful technique in language teaching for a number of reasons. It gives the students a concrete focus for their work and also ensures that English (rather than the only the mother tongue) is produced as a result of their groupwork. Poster production can also be a lively way of working. Students can design their posters, spend time on how they look and express their ideas graphically. They can form a welcome break from a linear presentation of ideas in which groups feedback, one after the other, to the whole class. Posters allow all groups to feedback simultaneously, thus using the time more effectively. They also form a permanent record of the work that has been done that can be displayed.

Practical ideas

• For poster production you - or the students - will need to have available supplies of large sheets of paper, coloured pens, scissors, glue or adhesive tape, and something to affix them to the wall.
• Coloured sheets mounted on a white background can make posters more attractive to look at.
• Students can be asked to work on parts of their posters for homework, once they have decided in their group what they want to write.
• Encourage them to produce a draft before they put their writing on a poster.
• Once the students are ready with their posters, you can put them up on the wall or lay them out on the desks. Students can then walk around the class, looking at the posters. You could ask one member of each group to stay by their poster to explain what they have done.
• Posters can be photographed for permanent reference. A class photograph can be taken with their poster display.