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00:00:03

[Will Rixon]

Hi Dominika, how are you?

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Hello.

[Will Rixon]

Hi.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Hi, hi.

[Will Rixon]

Right, so Dominika, thank you so much. Firstly, thank you very much for putting forward yourself for New Voices, very much appreciated.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Thank you.

[Will Rixon]

You're a secondary English teacher with a passion for creativity and student-centered learning. Does that come from a Where does that come from?

Where does that passion come from?

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

I guess it's just somewhere.

It's just something that you have.

[Will Rixon]

Fair enough. It's okay. Good.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

It's something that I've always been a very creative person.

So the creativity that's given and students that comes with teaching.

[Will Rixon]

Excellent. I also have a passion for creativity. I think it's, it's a huge, huge force for the human race, I think, especially nowadays. So I'm going to pass it over to you, Dominika. I will stick around just to make sure that your, your share goes well.

00:01:08

So I'm going to stop sharing. I'll hand it over to you and I'll just stick around to make sure it all works as we hope.

Perfect. First time, got it.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Thank you.

Hello everyone. Uh, that's the first time I'm actually giving a talk, so Bear with me a little bit. I'm not used to not seeing the people I'm talking to. So hello everyone. I can see that you're writing there.

Hi. Hi. Hello. This talk is titled Beyond In the Picture I Can See. And in my talk, I just want to show you some of my tips that I use when I teach secondary school.

00:02:12

Uh, teenagers. I don't know about you. You can always write something in the chat, uh, to share with me. I'll be very excited. Uh, when I first started teaching, uh, teenagers at secondary school after, um, after I finished my studies, uh, the, the hardest thing for me was, uh, teaching speaking.

I don't know about you, but for me, Grammar has structure. I've always loved teaching grammar. It's like it all comes natural. Vocabulary, it can be memorized. Vocabulary, you can do crosswords or other stuff.

00:02:57

But when I saw in my plan that today is the speaking lesson, I kind of froze and thought a lot about what we are going to— what are we going to do now? About that, uh, and especially getting them to do some of the, um, getting them to talk confidently and on their own. Uh, I'm sure that it differs from country to country. Uh, in our country, uh, I'm from Slovakia, the school leaving exam consists of, uh, picture descriptions, uh, then discussion and role plays or monologue, which we sometimes call simulation. In this talk, I will focus mostly on picture description, and then I'll show you some tricks with role plays and monologues, but mostly picture description, picture descriptions.

00:04:03

This, I titled my talk "In the Picture I Can See." Because that's what usually, uh, the only thing I can get out of students is in the picture I can see that there is a man and he's wearing the white shirt and it's very nice. And we are over after like 5 to 10 seconds. Uh, then sometimes they can mention that in the background the sun is shining. Uh, but we're done at that point. And I want to, I want to get them to describe it for 5 minutes and not just 30 seconds.

So now we are going to do the fun part.

Okay.

00:04:58

Describing pictures is not only about describing the physical physical things we can actually see, but it consists— but it's also the art of speculation. Students need to be able to speculate about the picture because there aren't many pictures you can describe just physically for 5 minutes. So if we are moving beyond physical description, this is the one of the first things I do with almost all my classes. I show them this very picture of the bench. It's a stock picture of a random bench.

I have one other which is somewhere at the bank of the lake or river.

And this is what I show them. And then I start a timer and I tell them, you have 5 minutes to describe this very picture. Well, after a couple of seconds, They run out of physical things to describe. Obviously, there's nothing there. There's like a bench and some bushes or whatever.

00:06:07

But physically, we can describe materials or whatever. But then I tell them, see, you're done, but you still have 4 and a half minutes to go. So now what you are going to do is to speculate.

What has happened on that bench? Where actually is that bench? What's the story of the bench? And when they realize that, it usually gets them going pretty well. So I often start with, with this simple picture of a bench.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering what Bill Skarsgård is doing there.

00:06:53

First of all, I love the guy, but that's not the important part. The important thing is that I use plural Bill as a teaching tool when we do picture descriptions. First of all, this pic, the first picture of Bill Skarsgård as Bill Skarsgård, as himself, I show it I use these two pictures for a whole 45-minute class. We start by showing Bill and doing regular 5-minute picture description of a person. They can describe him physically and they speculate about maybe some of his character traits or something.

But then I keep the same picture of Bill, the one where he's where he is, Bill, and we do topic-based picture description, but still with the same picture of Bill.

00:08:01

In Slovakia, we have these topics that are, that relate to the picture somehow, for example, family or housing. So I just do random wheel of topics and let's say education comes up. So now they need to describe the very same picture but make it education related, related to the topic of education. So they can speculate about his education. And that's what we do a few rounds of.

And then I switch to the other picture where he's in the movie Nosferatu.

And that's the plot twist. I tell them that's the same, that's the very same guy. And the next part of the lesson is describing the second picture while speculating what on earth has happened to poor Bill to get him looking like that. You can find other pictures or other stills from the movie even with the visible with other visible deformities from the movie Nosferatu, if you have seen it. I didn't want to scar you with that, but you get the general idea of what I am doing here.

00:09:25

It usually gets all like, he must have, should have, so it's also good for grammar-based picture description. But, uh, yeah, this Bill Skarsgård method I can usually fill my whole 45-minute class with, with these two pictures in general. Okay, uh, I guess we are pretty short on time, so we are moving on. Uh, here, uh, I am going to tell you about three, uh, more, but three more quick tips. Describing nothing is a step above describing a park bench.

It's when you're feeling brave. Instead of describing park bench, I just show them picture of nothing and run the same, same timer, 5 minutes, 5 minutes on the dot and describe nothing. It can be black screen or white screen. Usually the descriptions differ vastly whether you use— based on whether you use a white or black screen.  

00:10:38

Another tip I have here for you is blind drawing, but it's useful for mechanical drill of actually describing the physical features of the picture. Like, there are pictures where there are so many details, but they focus on like one or two small things. So I tell them to sit with their backs to each other in pairs, give one person a picture, and the other has to draw it solely based on the description of the person who sees the picture. So the second person doesn't actually see the picture and he has to draw it. It's very useful for contextualizing things like background, foreground, focus.

00:11:28

Yeah, some students even need to think of where is left or right, but yeah, it works well with drilling actual physical features of the picture. And then on the screen you can see 4 pictures.

This is AI-generated.

Picture with 4 different pictures, and the thing here is that one is odd one out.

One doesn't belong with the others. So if you can just quickly type in the chat, which one do you think is the one that doesn't belong? If we are comparing the pictures.

Okay, I see, I see 4 classroom.

00:12:29

Yeah. Okay, bottom right. So you all agree that it's, that is number 4.

Okay, we have 1, but most of you are typing number 4. Why do you think it's number 4? What's the, what's the reason? Why is the odd one out? Or two, or one.

Okay.

Oh, that it's indoors, that it's modern, no architecture, or is more modern public places. Oh, many different categories. Uh, at first I was very surprised that, uh, you start You started writing number 4, most of you, but now we have more options. Now I can see some of you are saying 1, some of you are saying 2, some of you are saying 3 or 4, all subjects except for one. Well, the thing is, there is no right answer.

00:13:37

That's why it's called the Four Picture Lie. There is no Odd One Out. The pictures are actually, uh, very random. I just, uh, generated like, give me 4 random pictures, and I tell my students that there is an odd one out, and the reason is very specific, and they have to compare them and find out which one is the odd one out. And usually they find, uh, reasoning for all of or all of those.

Like, one group decides that 1 is the odd one out because reasons. One decides— the other group decides that 4 is the odd one out. And actually, with that one, this very specific picture, or 4 pictures in one, yeah, most of them do choose 4 or 1. But I've heard good reasons for number 2 also.

00:14:42

And this works with any random pictures. I don't always use AI. Maybe sometimes I use pictures from the magazine or the textbook and tell them, tell me which is the odd one out and what do the rest have in common.

There is a question that what was my prompt? My prompt was simply generate 4 random pictures, 4 picture descriptions, and it generated a few. And this is one I chose, I like the best, but it works with any 4 random pictures from magazine, from textbook, from color book, whatever, because you If you give them the prompt, the students the task to find what's in common and what is different, they usually will be trying to, they will be able to find something. Okay. So happy that you enjoyed the 4-picture lie, and I hope you're not offended by me lying to you.

00:16:00

Now I'll be moving on to role plays, but now just very quickly I'll go through the role plays. I'm not sure if you know, but I doing role plays, I get many ideas from the, from the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway. First idea I would, then I'm running late.

[Will Rixon]

Hi, Dominika.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Hi.

[Will Rixon]

I wouldn't have put it so bluntly, but yes, we need to start closing it down in a second.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Okay, so I'll just very quickly tell you my, I'll put it in 1 minute. Information embargo, only 1 student knows the scenario.

That's one of my favorite roleplay ideas.

00:16:52

Because I send one half of the classroom outside and tell the roleplay scenario only to the other group. They don't have to guess, but they just have to react. That's very nice. And character cards is something I do with groups that are not very good at roleplays and they are too nervous about being themselves. So I just write them down, some character cards, for example, you are extremely aggressive person who argues all the time, or you are a Karen that always complains.

And that makes them step outside of their own personality.

00:17:40

And the last thing I would show you is a white towel, and that's just a little inside joke I have with my students because we don't have to take ourselves too seriously all the time. And that's when they have to speak for 5 minutes, they often stop sooner, and I use expression, why are you throwing in the towel? So then I started to literally bring a white towel to classrooms, to the classroom, And when we do monologues, they have to literally throw in the towel. And I just noticed that when they have the physical towel in their hands, they hesitate before actually throwing it into the ring.

00:18:27

Okay, so since I'm running late, thank you very much for joining me. Tonight, and I'm gonna stop sharing. Have I stopped sharing?

[Will Rixon]

Thank you, Dominika. I'm sorry, I didn't want to— I'm sorry for interrupting.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

No, no, no, that's fine.

[Will Rixon]

Wonderful talk. Thank you so much for putting it together. Um, everyone, you actually see— so you'll be able to see the rest of your slides, Dominika, when we, we'll give them to them in a goodie bag. We'll be able to see the end of the, the slides.

Thank you again, Dominique. I really appreciate it. You're not very well today. I just want to say you're not very well. And I just wanted to say thank you so much for still coming in and doing this.

It really means a lot.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Thank you for the opportunity. I couldn't pass up on it even though I was feeling like it's my last day on earth, but I thought I have to pull through and—.

[Will Rixon]

You did it and you did it. Well done.

00:17:27

Good stuff. Thank you very much.

[Dominika Mikušiaková]

Appreciate it. Thank you.