Freeze Frame activities to teach English

Developing Freeze Frames

What is it about?

Freeze Frame is a fun, interactive way to review a story by assigning to students to groups that create physical depictions of scenes from a story (short film, class story, novel, etc.) in ‘freeze frame’ vignettes.

In a freeze frame, students work together in groups to visually represent one part of a story through dramatisation. It is a silent, motionless depiction of a scene. Members of a group use their bodies to make an image or picture capturing an idea, theme, or moment in time from the text. Each group presents their freeze frame to the rest of the class with the teacher counting down to zero at which point the whole group freeze into position. Freeze frame encourages close reading of a particular scene in a text and all students contribute.

HOW TO DO FREEZE FRAME:

1. Select 8-10 scenes from a story or text that would be interesting to depict in a “freeze frame” vignette.
2. Divide the class into groups. The groups should contain the number of characters needed to depict the scenes plus one additional student. (3 characters in most scenes = 4 students per group).
3. Read one of the scenes aloud to the class. Give the groups between 30 seconds and one minute to create their vignette depicting that scene. The extra student in the group should play the role of the director, arranging his/her group mates to form a beautiful frozen moment.
4. After the scene is set, call time.
5. Have the director snap a photo of his/her group and send it to you (the teacher) to project and discuss with the class later. If this is not a realistic possibility, then you can unfreeze all but two groups and have the ‘thawed’ students look at the two groups that are still frozen. Compare and contrast the two groups’ depictions of the scene at hand.
6. Unfreeze all groups, have them choose a new director/photographer, and give them a new scene. Repeat the process for as many scenes as you have prepared. (The Comprehensible Classroom, 2019).

Lesson Plan #1

Learning Goals:

• • Developing practical knowledge in drama, students will explore elements and techniques of drama.
  • Developing ideas in drama Students will contribute ideas and participate in drama, using personal experiences and imagination.
  • Communicating and interpreting in drama students will share drama through informal presentation and respond to ways in which drama tells stories and conveys ideas.
  
  
  Time: 60 minutes.
  
  

Procedure: 

1. Each group of students has five minutes to create a freeze frame situation. This is a snapshot of the students doing a particular activity, with them frozen in position. Possible examples include “riding a rollercoaster”, “doing surgery”, or “cleaning the house”. Encourage the students to be creative and use funny activities. Separate the groups so that none of the groups overhear each other. 

2. When they have their situations ready, each group takes turns in coming to the front and performing their freeze frame. Remember to strictly enforce no movement or speaking!

3. If the students have camera phones available, one member of each group should take a photo of all the freeze frames. The groups then review all the photos, writing three or more sentences (depending on the number of groups) about what the students are doing, using the target language. At the end, review all the ideas for each freeze frame as a class.

4.  Alternatively, if taking photos is not possible/appropriate, you could ask each group to hold the freeze for a little longer. In this time you could discuss ideas as a class, or each group could quickly write down one or two sentences.

Lesson Plan #2

Learning Goals:

• Develop speaking skill.
• Improve fluency.
• Learn vocabulary.

Procedure: 

For this activity, you can assign your students an inanimate object. Allow them to pick one from a hat at random or allow them to choose one for themselves. Students must then write a funny monologue in the first person from the perspective of that object. Once they have written their monologues, ask them to each perform it in front of the other students. If your students are of a lower level, you can brainstorm some ideas and vocabulary beforehand, such as a mind map of feelings, sentence starters, or even a topic for them to focus their monologues on like ‘a day in school’.

Lesson Plan #3

 

Activity: Acting Out or Putting Words to an Emotion.

Time: 60 minutes.

Learning goals:

Ø Developing practical knowledge in drama, students will explore elements and techniques of drama.

Ø Students will improve their writing and speaking skill.

Ø Students will be able to learn more about their feelings.

Ø Students will learn mew vocabulary related with emotions.

Why to apply it?

This is great to teach your students about feelings along with the main teacher in situations and introduce some moral lessons into your classes. Asking your students to give a dialog to a feeling is not only improving their speaking and vocabulary but also helping them to become aware of what situations make a person feel a certain emotion, improving their empathy, and teaching them care and kindness. 

How to apply it?

The aim of the game is to give students an emotion or sensation to act out or put a dialog too. You can put a selection of emotions inside a hat and have them pick one out, or have a group discussion and brainstorm emotions on a whiteboard and then, have the student whose turn it is pick one of the board. The student whose turn it is can use dialog and actions to depict the emotion, but they cannot say the name of the emotion or a synonym of the emotion, like in taboo.

Lesson Plan # 4

Activity: Improvisation to Scenarios or Certain Characters

Time: 45 minutes.

Learning goals:

v Developing practical knowledge in drama, students will explore elements and techniques of drama.

v Students will develop confidence when speaking in English.

v Students will learn new expressions.

Benefits:

This is great as a fall-back activity, but it is also a great activity to plan on. Students almost always love this because it is funny and allows them the freedom to be creative and silly. It’s an explorative activity, which is beneficial to the students, as it allows them to develop confidence in speaking and takes away anxieties, which could restrict their speaking skills in other situations, because it is a fun and laid-back activity.

Procedure:

This one is so easy to do and is a great activity for your own improvisation when your lessons run shorter than expected or even when they just don’t work out the way you expected. Basically, just give your students a piece of paper with a scenario or a character type on and ask them to invent a short drama based on this! If you want to make a longer activity out of it, you can even get your students to write up the scenarios and characters, and place them in a basket for them to pick out.

Lesson Plan # 5

Activity: Charades

Time: 45 minutes.

Learning goals:

ü Developing practical knowledge in drama, students will explore elements and techniques of drama.

ü Students will improve their communication skill using the English language.

ü Students will learn new vocabulary.

Why to apply it?

This old classic may seem obvious, but it has proven effective for YEARS. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Using charades in your classroom allows students to competitively think of quick-fire vocabulary on the spot in order to guess what their peers are acting. The energy and speed of this game leave anxiety behind and give your students room to practice their vocabulary without the pressure.

How to apply it?

It is an acting game where one student mimes a vocabulary work in silence while the rest of the group guesses. You can variate this game quite a lot between one student acting and the others guessing, one student guessing and the others acting, playing in teams where two people on opposite teams act the same word and the other team members compete to guess first and so on.

Bibliography:

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator/drama-activities-for-language-learning/

https://www.meddeas.ie/esl-drama-activities/

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2014/10/24/freeze-frame/

http://www.english-4kids.com/gamespkg2.html