This activity is very simple, but quite wonderful!
The General Idea of Image-Text Matching activities:
You simply give the students pictures and associated text. The students match up the text with the images.
The hardest part is preparing the images and text. But don’t worry–I’ve done all the hard work for you for one great Image-Text Matching activity! (See “The Swinging Door” below.)
In more detail:
1. Choose pictures that have some kind of theme. National parks, unusual-looking animals, creative DIY ideas, etc. They could also be humorous images.
2. Either use text that is already with the pictures, or write your own. Of course you want to choose and/or edit the text so that it will be appropriate for your students.
3. Have the students match each picture with the text that describes it or is otherwise associated with it.
I like to randomly distribute the images and the text, then have the students take turns reading the text they have. Each person is either reading aloud or listening closely. This gives good listening practice, makes the activity very meaning-focused, and also gives the students lots of natural model input. The pictures make the language more comprehensible, and also more “real”.
“The Swinging Door” (Feel free to use this in your own classroom!):
The example I am giving is a textless story I call “The Swinging Door.” It’s a story told all in pictures, but I wrote narrative text for each image. Check it out at the link below, and feel free to use it as you wish. The PDF has suggested instructions for how to do this activity, as well as the images and text to print out and cut up.