Teachers

Beginner ELL Activities

Use the following artworks and activities to build your students' comprehension, speaking, and writing skills.

Shown from the lap up, a woman with peach-colored skin sits leaning sideways against the back of a wooden chair with her head tilted to our left on her long neck in this vertical, stylized portrait. The painting is done mostly with areas of mottled color outlined in delicate black lines. The top of her head and her left elbow, on our right, are slightly cut off by the edges of the canvas. Her copper-red hair is parted in the middle and puffs down and around her hears. Her elongated oval face and delicate features are simply drawn. Pencil-thin, nearly straight, grayish eyebrows float above almond-shaped eyes entirely filled in with black. A faint gray line forms her elongated nose. Her small rose pink, pursed lips are slightly darker than the faint blush on her cheeks. Her jet-black, long-sleeved dress has a high waist and a wide, diaphanous gray collar at the rounded neckline. Her left elbow, on our right, drapes over the top of the spindles making up the back of the chair so her hand rests near the gray collar. Her other arm rests by her side. The background is a foggy swirl of sage green and elephant gray. Two faint, thin, parallel, horizontal gray lines that run across the background may suggest a baseboard. — Amedeo Modigliani, *Woman with Red Hair*, 1917, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.176

Writing Activity: How would you describe the mood of the woman in this painting? What do you think she might be thinking? Write a few sentences from the point of view of the woman. Use the descriptive word cards (PDF 34KB) as a starting point.

We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.” — George Bellows, *New York*, 1911, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1986.72.1

Writing Activity: What nouns, verbs, and adjectives can you list in looking at this painting? Using the Nouns-Verbs-Adjectives worksheet (PDF 34KB), write as many words in English as you can think of, then write more words in your native language. Work together as a class to translate the words not written in English.

This square portrait shows the head and shoulders of a young woman in front of a spiky bush that fills much of the background except for a landscape view that extends into the deep distance to our right. The woman's body is angled to our right but her face turns to us. She has chalk-white, smooth skin with heavily lidded, light brown eyes, and her pale pink lips are closed. Pale blush highlights her cheeks, and she looks either at us or very slightly away from our eyes. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, but tight, lively curls frame her face. Her hair turns gold where the light shines on it. She wears a brown dress, trimmed along the square neckline with gold. The front of the bodice is tied with a blue ribbon, and the lacing holes are also edged with gold. A sheer white veil covers her chest and is pinned at the center with a small gold ball. The bush fills the space around her head with copper-brown, spiky leaves. A river winds between trees and rolling hills in the distance to our right. Trees and a town along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting, is pale blue under an ice-blue sky. — Leonardo da Vinci, *Ginevra de' Benci [obverse]*, c. 1474/1478, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1967.6.1.a

Speaking Activity: How would you describe this woman? Who do you imagine she was? Is she young or old? What puzzles you about this painting? Do you like it? Why or why not? Use the descriptive word cards (PDF 34KB) as a starting point.

Thirteen round cakes sit in three rows, each on a disk-like stand supported on a thin rod, in this horizontal painting. We look slightly down onto the cakes, which only barely overlap. All of the cakes are round except for one, which has been cut in half so we see the four layers of yellow cake and chocolate frosting inside. The top of that cake is white. All of the other cakes are unique except for two angel food cakes at the center, which are slightly different heights. Most of the other cakes have white or brown frosting, except for a pink cake at the front right. That cake has white swags piped on the sides and a pink rose on the top. Next to it is a cake topped with yellow, perhaps lemon curd. The other two cakes in the front row have a white swirl against dark brown frosting, and the fourth, near the left egde, is topped with a single red cherry. Half of a low, pale orange cake is cut off by the left edge of the canvas in the middle row. Each cake stand casts a pale gray shadow against the light, arctic-blue counter. The paint is thickly applied throughout, and the outlines around the cakes, plates, and rods are streaked with rainbow colors. The artist signed the work by incising his name and the date into the wet white paint in the top right corner: “Thiebaud 1963.” — Wayne Thiebaud, *Cakes*, 1963, oil on canvas, Gift in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art from the Collectors Committee, the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, and The Circle, with Additional Support from the Abrams Family in Memory of Harry N. Abrams, 1991.1.1

Speaking Activity: What words can you think of to describe what you see in this painting? What desserts do you like to eat or make for happy times and celebrations? Sketch your favorite dessert and then describe it to the rest of the class.

A small brown dog and a pale-skinned little girl wearing a white dress sit in matching celestial-blue armchairs in this horizontal painting. To our right, the girl sits with her legs angled to our left. She slumps back with her legs spread, and her left elbow, on our right, is bent so that hand rests behind her head. Her other elbow is draped over the armrest. Her dark brown hair appears to be pulled back, and tawny brown eyes under faint brows gaze down and to our left. She has a small nose set in a round face and a coral-pink mouth closed in a straight line. Her white dress has touches of gray, soft pink, and powder blue with a wide plaid sash around her waist. The pine-green, black, and sapphire-blue sash is accented with overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of burnt orange, light blue, and mustard yellow. Her socks match her sash and come up to mid-calf, over black shoes with silver buckles. The small dog has scruffy black fur and a russet-brown face. It lies curled in the chair opposite the girl, to our left, with its eyes closed and ears pricked up. The rounded backs of the upholstered chairs curve down to become the low arms. The vivid and light blue fabric of the chairs is scattered with loosely painted strokes of avocado and forest green, peach pink, cherry red, plum purple, and white. Beyond the chairs closest to us is another armchair and an armless loveseat, both covered with the same fabric. They sit at the back of the room, in a corner flooded with silvery light coming through four windows on the right side. The furniture is arranged on a peanut-brown floor. The artist signed in the lower left, “Mary Cassatt.” — Mary Cassatt, *Little Girl in a Blue Armchair*, 1878, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.18

Writing Activity: How would you describe the girl in this painting? How would you describe the dog? Complete the I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB), taking on the perspective of either the dog or the girl in this painting. Alternatively, write down one or two sentences describing what either the dog or the girl is thinking.

I am poem worksheet (PDF 31KB)

Nouns-Verbs-Adjectives worksheet (PDF 34KB)

Descriptive word cards (PDF 35KB)

Intermediate ELL Activities

Advanced ELL Activities