Teacher's Notes: Describing People
This exercise can be taken out of its current place and used whenever appropriate. It works well for classes of varying levels, covering simple descriptive vocab as well as adding extra words for detail. I start this activity by making categories on the board: Hair, Eyes, etc. and asking the students to tell me all the words that could describe each category. After they are out of ideas, I fill in more. (This is also a good time to review parts of the face.)
For example,
Hair: brown, blond, black, red, long, short, curly, wavy, straight, bald
Eyes: brown, blue, green, black, big, small, round, almond
Nose: pointy, round, big, small
Teeth: white, yellow, crooked, straight, rabbit, vampire
Ears: big, small, hairy, with earrings
Face: thin, round, with freckles, glasses, mustache, beard
Body: short, tall, thin, fat, plump, average/normal
Then I ask the students to use the words to describe me. Long, straight, blond hair, etc. (This is also a good time to review “she has, he has”.) At this point, we start the worksheet and start describing the people. For example, Damian has a pointy nose. He has a pointy chin. He has a beard and a mustache. And so on. Here is where you add in extra vocabulary – bald, earring, bow tie, freckles, zipper, buttons, glasses, spots, stripes, necklace, pocket, braid, pig tails, pony tail, etc. After going through each person briefly and answering students’ questions about how to say certain characteristics, go to the next worksheet and identify the people who fit the description of each question. This could be done as a group or in partners or alone. Finally, the “Who Am I?” game requires students to identify the person described.
There are countless other activities that could go along with this one – students could take turns describing themselves, write a description of someone else in the class and then guess as a class who it is, write descriptions of movie stars from magazines and make a guessing game, etc. One of my favorites is to have the students play the popular Guess Who? board game in which two students each have the same sets of cards showing people. They must take turns asking a yes or no question (Is it a man? Does he have glasses?) to narrow down the person that the opposite player has chosen. You can make your own cards, use the actual game, or cut out the pictures from the worksheet.
Worksheet Answers
Who has …? : 1. Jen, Kevin, Barb. 2. Paul. 3. Damian, Claudia, Barb, Paul. 4. Damian, Perry. 5. Damian, Perry, Paul. 6. Kevin, Barb, Perry. 7. Kevin, Toby, Lizzy. 8. Damian, Claudia, Lizzy. 9. Damian, Claudia. 10. Damian, Barb. 11. Kevin. 12. Jen, Claudia, Paul. 13. Jen, Claudia, Lizzy. 14. Toby, Claudia. 15. Lizzy. 16. Jen, Lizzy, Paul. 17. Barb. 18. Damian. 19. Perry. 20. Lizzy. 21. Perry. 22. Toby. 23. Jen, Claudia, Paul. 24. Barb
Who am I? : 1. Perry. 2. Claudia. 3. Jen. 4. Barb. 5. Lizzy. 6. Damian. 7. Paul. 8. Kevin. 9. Toby.
