Read through them, and choose one or two activities to put into practice in your classroom. You could either use the activity as written here, or use the activity as a starting point to create your own materials.
Some of the activities can be used straightaway within the classroom, but others ask students to collect information as they move about the world. Some activities could take ten minutes. Some activities could take ten hours, spread over several weeks. Perhaps some of the following activities could develop into full Action Research projects for teachers and older students, or adapted for use with younger children who are keen to be language detectives and urban explorers.
These activities should stimulate discussion about how we can 'read' a landscape, and how we can encourage students to ask critical questions about a language environment. As none of the activities are linked to any curriculum or test, you are free to adapt them as you need.
1. Take note
> Classroom activity.
How many ideas can you collect about the signs we might pass everyday? Photograph and print a range of local street signs, then glue each photo to a blank piece of paper. Divide students into pairs. Give one photograph to each student pair. Ask the students to write around the photo the words, phrases or questions that are prompted by what they see. Students might observe colour, shape, or the sign's position in the street. They might ask questions, such as 'Who is the sign for?' After 5-10 minutes, pass the sheet to the next pair. Perhaps the next pair of students can add to the comments, answer any questions, or pose another question of their own. Carry on passing the papers until the signs have toured the room.
2. Translate
> School-based activity.
Walk around the school and, for every sign you see that is not in English, translate it. Put the English translation next to the original signage. Do you feel the need to translate the sign exactly? Do you want to exactly copy the look of the sign? Do you feel you would like to vary colour, composition, graphics, layout? Does the sign 'read' differently if you change, for example, a sans serif typeface to an informal typeface? You could vary this activity by identifying just one sign to translate into different forms of English and presenting it in many different graphic styles. What is the impact of this sudden burst of English in the environment?
3.Wall map
> Classroom activity based on outdoor photographic work.
Draw a map of streets you are studying in your language landscapes project. Ask the students to photograph language that they meet on the streets, whether it is graffiti, a shop sign, a street sign or a newspaper. Print these photographs and add them to the wall map. As the photos accumulate, observe where are the clusters of English or other languages. Ask the students to discuss why this is so, and who they think will read the languages; does the reader of these languages have to behave differently in any place in response to the languages they have seen?
4. Emotion map
> A variant of the classroom map in number 3.
Some signs or phrases in different languages have an 'emotional' appeal - we may feel happy to see the word Welcome but frustrated to read the words No Entry; we may feel relieved to see the see the word Open and intrigued to read a sign in a shop window, Wear Cool! Against each photograph of the sign that prompts a student's response, add the emotion (Angry, Frustrated, Excited etc). Colour code the emotion (always write Surprised in the colour blue, for example), to show which streets (and which signs and languages) elicit the most mixed feelings.
5. Eye-spy
> Outdoor work, then classroom activity to encourage observation skills and critical thinking.
Photograph as many language items in the landscape as possible to create a large and varied wall display - language on a food wrapper, graffiti, shop sign, prohibition sign, pavement sign, road sign, tourist information board and so on. Ask students to find a variety of items: such as the upper case letter E; the word NO; any adjective; a word they can't understand; a negative; a permission; and so on. Are there language patterns which emerge? Do students adopt observation strategies - for example, scanning circles to find the letters NO? Does this suggest how we are accustomed to read signs? Do we stop to think about, and talk over, how a sign has come into the place it occupies?
6. Footnote on History
> A multi-stage project for indoors and outdoors.
Photograph all the signs or language the class can find in just one street. Print each sign and, from the collection, compose an A4 booklet. Students create a few sentences or a paragraph to describe each sign, then add their written contribution to the picture on the page. The book is complete! Next term, or next year, get out this book and use it as the start point with a new group of students. Walk down the street to carry out a survey - Which sign has been vandalised? Which sign has disappeared? Which language has been replaced? Take a new photo wherever there is change. Ask the students to include their contribution to the book, writing their observations, ideas, and notes about how the street has changed, or stayed the same.
7. Interview
> Work for home.
Ask the students to conduct an audio or video interview with a parent or grandparent. Ask questions about language - what changes have you noticed about how language around us has changed? What new words are in use? Have street names changed? Has signage changed? Have they noticed ways in which shops have changed names? Has the labelling on goods, products, or foodstuffs changed? Are there 'disappeared' words? Is any language discouraged? Ask each student to write up a short resume of the interview, highlighting the key points of language change.
8. Storytelling
> Outdoors photography for work in the classroom and home.
Ask students to photograph a range of signs or languages on signs - for example, a multilingual tourist board, a street sign, a prohibition sign without text, a shop sign that uses 'mock' English. Ask students to create a narrative which links these signs. Depending on the student, they might begin by telling a simple story sequence, or extend this into a written story containing characters, plot twists and turns, problems, surprising events and themes of journeying, self-awareness and revelation.
9. Risk Assessment
> A classroom activity which follows practical experience.
Taking photographs of signs on the street, on private houses, on gates (where there are dogs), security areas, fences at patrolled private grounds, car windows, or shop fronts can lead to trouble. Many language landscapes researchers can report an incident they haven't wanted, because their strange photography behaviour has attracted unwanted attention. Can students create a Stay Safe Guide for researchers?
10. Tour Guides
> Outdoors activity for two or more hour-long lessons.
Choose a street with two pavements, familiar to most students. Divide the class into two groups. Both groups walk along one side of the street, compiling a Tour of the Street. Ask the students, as they plan their tour, to focus on how they could talk about language, but their tour could also take into account the place they find language, the history of a shop sign, the dramatic moment which gave rise to the road sign, and so on. Each group then delivers their tour to the other group, as if they were tour guides showing a party of tourists along the street. This project can be extended by leading groups from other language classes.
11. Activism
> Long-term school project.
Discuss what area around the school needs a sign with municipal support. For example, a place of safe road crossing for students, a sign pointing to a safe cycle route, a sign to inform parents about drop-off and pick-up points or times. Plan a project to install that sign. Students will need to discuss signage content, work with local authorities, prepare arguments, read municipal papers, be involved with planning departments, use skills of persuasion and be prepared for either success or disappointment. The activity leads students to consider how politics and processes of urban development interacts with the languages and signage we take for granted in the landscape.
12. Guerrilla Signage
> Classroom preparation followed by outdoors activity.
Choose an issue which matters to the students, whether of global or local significance, for example, litter. Ask students to draw up a range of signs - perhaps to address shoppers, pedestrians, motorists, visitors - to reduce waste, reuse plastic items, and recycle materials. The activity can include discussion on text, graphic design, emplacement, and impact. When the posters are complete, install them. Photograph them in place. An extension of the project is to interview passer-by to discover whether they saw the sign, and find out their reaction.
13. Selfie signs
> Classroom activity.
Ask the students to draw a picture of themselves in the middle of a piece of paper. Around their picture, they must put signs to express themselves in their many states. They should model their 'selfie-signs' from public signs they have seen in their environment. Allow discussion time and provide supporting photography to help. The activity can be as creative or as humourous as the student wishes. Would they include, say, a sign for Danger! Student at Work! Or perhaps a directional road sign for InsideMyHead Street. Or a sign that reads STOP THINK BEFORE SPEAKING or GO STRAIGHT AHEAD placed over the drawing of their mouth? The activity can be adapted by asking students to incorporate pictures of themselves with adapted signage to create a photomontage effect.
14. Word Order
> Classroom activity.
Show a range of photographed signs containing written language and set the students an activity to change the word order of the signs. A simple beginning changes NO PARKING to PARKING NO. Would a student have to place any other words (or letters) in the sign for it to make sense? Would the sign lose sense if more words were added? What common word orders can you identify in signage?
15. Anachronism
> Classroom activity.
Show the students a sign or label with a little text. Perhaps a prohibition sign, an instructional sign, a goods declaration, or product description. Would the same sign be understood for any other time in history? Can students write the sign, for example, for Neolithic times? For Tudor England? In London of 1666? To be read by Queen Victoria? Or to be displayed today for tourists at the Tower of London? This activity will lead students into bizarre territory, but makes the point that meanings of signs emerge from a particular time, place, and cultural moment. To make the same meanings of a sign - without looking for irony or humour - the reader may also need to occupy the same moment in time and place, driven by the same cultural concerns, as the sign's authors.
16. Pronoun hunt
> Classroom activity.
Keep a wall display of signage in all varieties - English only, bilingual, multilingual, graphic only - and change it regularly. Replace or add signs with print-outs of photographs that students take, labels from tinned goods, clothing labels, cut-outs from plastic carrier bags, till receipts, and so on. Each week, set the students hunting for a particular word, for example a pronoun, verb, noun, or adjective. How many can they find this week? Are the words you look for always used in association with other words? For example, the noun bicycle might always appear with the negative NOT and many times be associated with a verb. What observations can you make as you hunt around?
17. Say Please and Thank you
> Classroom activity.
Use your wall display as in number 16. Is the reader of a sign ever addressed politely? Which signs use Please and Thank you? Where would these signs be placed? Are they signs instructing tourists about appropriate behaviour? Or are they signs addressing residents who live locally? Are there signs the students think would be much improved by adding the words Please and Thank you? What difference can these words make? This activity can lead to general discussion about the authorship of signage, the place they are read, the purpose of the sign, and the construction of the intended audience.
18. Sign Rubbings
> Outdoor activity over an extended period.
Ask students to collect sign rubbings as they walk around the school, visit places with parents, explore the streets. Take sign rubbings in the same way as brass rubbings. Lay a sheet of paper over the surface of a sign, take a wax crayon to the surface, and rub to see what happens. This activity can be useful for literacy lessons for younger students who are learning the shape of the letter 'e' for example, but for an older student the activity can raise questions about history and technological impact on signage. Locally, for example, wrought iron signs with raised, cast letters, might have been replaced by flat printed signage, LED displays, or signs with smooth plasticised surfaces. The absence of rubbings from an area may reveal just as much about the history and culture of that area as a student book bursting with wax rubbings.
19. Minority language
> Outdoor activity over extended period.
Display a town map in the classroom. Ask students to bring in information about minority languages they have seen in any area. They might, for example, observe signs in Nahuatl, or Arabic, or French, in suburbs or central areas. Use colour-coded map pins to locate the signs and, if possible, accompany the pins with small thumbnail photographs. Over time, see where the language 'hot-spots' build up around the town. As an extension activity, imagine a speaker of a minority language moves through the town. Thread the pins together with the appropriate colour string. Which route would they need to take to maximise their exposure to a language? Which different route would give them an entirely different impression of the linguistic landscape?
20. Real signs
> Around the school.
School culture is often created in spoken language. What would be the impact if school culture were represented on public signage? Ask students to discuss school culture as a lived experience: they know where they are not allowed to run, where it is safe to congregate; where they will be told off for talking; which areas are good for loud noise and playing; which areas of playgrounds they are moved away from; where they can relax to eat; and so on. But there may not be signs to tell them this. Create a range of signs to display temporarily in these areas. What is the effect? Are other students happy about this, or do they feel uncomfortable? Discussions can lead to what authorities are implicit in signage, how the behaviours and identities of readers of signs are assumed or constructed, and how power relations between people are created or expressed through signage.
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