Inspiring photographs

Intriguing, artistic, topical, and sometimes amusing pictures can be found on the websites of most news sources, for example:

• The Guardian's 24 hours in pictures
• The BBC's In Pictures
• Reuters' Signs of the Times series

These can be used for all kinds of warmers and fillers, for all levels:

Beginners:

• Name as many things as you can in the picture.
• How does the picture make you feel? (choose from a list of adjectives)
• Guess the country / situation

Intermediate:

• Tenses practice: What is happening? What has happened? What is going to happen?
• Brainstorm adjectives to describe the picture.

Advanced:

• Describe the picture to a partner so they can make a rough sketch (good for designers, marketing students)
• Speculation modals: They might be doing... They must have been...

You can also get a lot of mileage out of the captions, from a straightforward "match the captions to the right picture", to a Call My Bluff type activity (give teams the real captions and get them to write two fake ones).