alice’s posterous

This is SO COOL! How did you find it?

Anyway. re: your question. It would inspire me to have students create their own video clips of things happening in various rooms of their own homes, i.e. 3-4 scenes, in Spanish.

Marcy, go to http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/, it's a fantastic website. I think your have a wonderful idea and kids would love doing that as it involves filming. I'm getting excited now, whoop, whoop! thank you for sharing :)

Thank you. My students did a film project with reflexive verbs. They created commercials in Spanish. It was such a positive experience for them, it has inspired ME to use filming more in the future with the students.

Have you already blogged about it? I would love to know more about your film project using reflexive verbs. Sounds like a fantastic idea to put in place!

Actually, I have *not* blogged re: the film project using reflexive verbs. But, since you've mentioned it, I will prepare a post for tomorrow re: the film project using reflexive verbs. See? You've given me an idea for the blog! :)

Cool, looking forward to reading your new post :)

Silent animation to teach foreign languages... GREAT idea to use in a classroom

Thank you, I think it is a great video too!

This is just marvellous. Thank you so much for the ideas! I'll try some of them with an adult class next week that I have trouble getting to do roleplay with and let you know what works

Anne, I'm glad you're going to use this animation in your adult class. Please, tell me how it went? thank you.

Alice,
An in-company Business English (upper intermediate) group used this video to talk about probability.
I showed them a still shot to introduce your first questions:
Who are these people?
What are they doing?
What rooms are they in?
What do you see in the rooms?
We then watched the first minute and I asked
What do you think is going to happen next?
(The students said "Maybe she will/ He'll probably")
Then we watched the whole thing. At the end we went back and discussed the questions, adding
What do you think these people do?
What do you think about these people? Are they helpful? Kind? Unkind?
We had a nice, long conversation about neighbors.
When that slowed down I said we'd be making up a story "How do you think the story will continue? And how sure are you about that? Can you be more specific or nuanced than 'probably' and 'I don't think so?"
and gave them a set of new phrases to use:
It's highly probable: I'll bet... I'm sure...
It's likely: Chances are... The odds are...
It's unlikely: There's an outside chance... It's hardly likely
It's next to impossible: That'll be the day! When pigs fly!
If something unexpected hapened: I'm not betting on...-ing, on the off chance
We studied these phrases in context by reading an unrelated dialogue, underlining phrases + doing a gapfill (Business Spotlight Plus 4/2009, something about the prospects of a language school doing business) and they discussed the phrases.
Then they used the new phrases listed above (worksheet), thinking back to the film and making their predictions. Class joke of the day: "When pandas fly!"
New phrase introduction using unrelated materials is a bit cheezy, I know, but that article/gapfill was really good for the more advanced ones, always hungry for language, while the others just played along as a bit of a quiet time before the next round of conversation.
Next lesson I'll have them use the phrases again in another context.
Thanks again!

Hello Alice! Wonderful idea lesson for my adult and children ELLs. I have the kids sometimes narrate the books with no words just brilliant pictures. However, I am sure they would love the videos as well. I just finished a lesson in which the adults created captions for Flickr photos but this would provide them with more dialogue to create. Possibly the students could create a story about the action and compare these stories in another class. I think it would be interesting to see what each student thought about the scene.

Hi Alice,

The first thing I thought of as soon as I saw this video was in using it for teaching the present continuous, especially if it could follow up a lesson that was already dealing with items of furniture /daily routines.

I'd divide the students into teams and then team members to call out what's happening as each clip changes and so would probably show the whole thing (with some pauses for questions about newer items).

I like this especially for the repetitive possibility to practice he is ..ing / she is...ing (and while it might be a bit dull for us adults after 10 mins, think students would enjoy!

Great find.

Karenne

Anne, thank you for your detailed lesson. It's fab! I really like the predictions and It's highly probable: I'll bet... I'm sure...
It's likely: Chances are... The odds are...
It's unlikely: There's an outside chance... It's hardly likely
It's next to impossible: That'll be the day! When pigs fly!
Didn't think about introducing those sentences, thank you!

Thank you Shelly, creating captions for Flickr photos is a brilliant idea!

Karenne, thank you for the team idea :)

Cette petite vidéo me paraît tout à fait intéressante pour travailler avec des élèves de niveau A2 / B1.
- Descriptions
- Hypothèses
- Argumentation / Discussion
etc.