Practising tenses using Bubblr

Overview of technology

Bubblr (http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr) is a tool that allows users to create strips of photos and add text through the addition of speech bubbles.

The images are all from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com), an online photo-sharing website where users can upload their photos and tag them so that they are easily searchable.
Lesson plan
This lesson plan would be used as a revision of tenses.

1. Show students three pre-prepared sentences on a Bubblr strip and ask a student to read the sentences out.
   
   See http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=13297 for an example of the verb jump.
2. Elicit the tenses used in the sentences.
3. Explain to students that they need to think of a verb and come up with their own strip showing the use of the verb in three different tenses.
4. Ask students to go to Bubblr (http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr) and enter their verb (e.g. cook, cooked, cooking) into the Search flickr images by…Tag box.
5. Ask students to find three suitable pictures that could be used with three different tenses: one in the present simple, one in the past simple and one in the present continuous.
6. Ask students to write their three sentences in speech bubbles – one speech bubble per picture. Ask students to consider carefully which type of speech bubble best illustrates their tense.

6. Students click on Publish and give the project a title.
7. Ask students to share their set of pictures with each other by sharing the name of their strip on the whiteboard. Students can then see each other’s strips in the archive.