Video Room Lessons

At our English academy we are fortunate to have a large room to use for video purposes, primarily showing videos from the internet.  The room is sometimes used--due to need--for regular language classes, yet it is also used to provide audio/visual support for alternative classes/lessons.

For example, several of my middle school classes have been reading condensed novels/books such as "Sherlock Holmes" (different stories), "The Lost World" (which Spielberg must have ripped off for "Jurassic Park"), "Dian and the Gorillas" (a nonfiction account of "Gorillas in the Mist"), etc.  For these texts I have usually been able to find a corresponding movie/tv show series (often produced by the BBC--thanks!) to show students in short segments.  So, they read a few chapters, and then we watch a ten minute segment of the story; the combination of reading and watching/listening not only helps to maintain interest, but it also helps with talking about characters, plot, setting, and so on.

Sometimes I build an entire lesson around a video, both for the variety and for the collaborative learning experience.  Over the last few days--as I think I wrote about before with "Presto"--I researched and found a short animated film (in this instance "Oktapodi", app. 3 minutes, very entertaining) which students watched and then summarized, each student writing one sentence in a combined paragraph on the whiteboard.

I also used the short animated film "Pigeon: Impossible" to practice some W-H questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how).

It's great to have such a facility at our new location.  The students obviously like the video-watching experiences, and I like the fact that I can get them to write without really thinking about it as a boring task .