Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos
Posted: July 28, 2014 Filed under: lesson plan, Viral Video 5 Comments
Hamster by Turquoise Field is licensed under CCBY2.0
MAIN ACTIVITIES Speculation, Comparison, Speaking about viral videos
SUITABLE FOR Teens and adults, Upper-Intermediate (B2.1) and above.
TEACHER’S NOTES (Click here for a pdf of the Teacher’s Notes.)
STEP 1
Display this photo of a monkey. Tell students to describe what they can see and say what they think is going to happen next. Get some feedback. Then display this photo and get students to speculate. What do they think it could be?
STEP 2
Tell students that they are going to watch a video. Put them in A/B pairs sitting back to back, with Student A facing the screen. Turn the sound off. Tell students that you’re going to play a video and Student A is going to describe to Student B what they see on the screen while it’s happening.
STEP 3
Play the clip from 00:03 to 00:44. Student B listens and can take notes.
STEP 4
Now tell students to change places. Play this video (no sound) from 00:06 to 01:12. Student B describes to Student A, who takes notes.
STEP 5
Still in the same pairs, students write down as many similarities and differences between the two videos as they can. Encourage them to use linking words of contrast of comparison.
STEP 6
Now regroup the students so that each one is working with a new partner (i.e. AA / BB pairs). They take it in turns to read out a sentence until they have none left. How many different words and phrases did they use to compare the videos? (e.g. Both videos show …. / One video was shot indoors while the other was filmed outside etc.)
STEP 7
Now it’s time to watch both videos. Play the first one again, with sound. Then play the second one. Any reactions to the videos? Why do students think they were made? (The monkey video advertises Go Pro Cameras while the hamster video was created by a social media agency called Denizen.) Would students share the videos on social media? Why (not)? Tell them that one of these videos went viral: Which one? (The hamster clip)
STEP 8
Get students to think of a video that they have shared on social media or one which has been shared with them. When they’ve had time to think, they tell a partner about the video and why they shared / watched it.
STEP 9
Send them the link to this TED talk to watch at home. In the next class, ask:
- Would you like to do the speaker’s job?
- Which of the clips had you seen before?
- According to the speaker, what are the three reasons why a video goes viral?
Wonderful World
Posted: July 15, 2014 Filed under: lesson plan | Tags: animals, David Attenborough, listening, speaking, vocabulary 8 Comments
Vivid Color by ccmerino is licensed under CCBY2.0
MAIN ACTIVITIES Listening, discussion, vocabulary of animals and geographical features.
SUITABLE FOR Teens and adults, Intermediate (B1) and above
TEACHER’S NOTES (Click here for a pdf of the Teacher’s Notes.)
STEP 1
Display this word cloud or make your own at http://www.wordle.net. Tell students that it contains the lyrics of a well-known song. Give them a minute to try and identify the song.
STEP 2
Display the second word cloud, which contains the song title. Did they get it right?
STEP 3
Tell them to draw a grid four squares by four squares. They choose sixteen words from the cloud and write one word in each square of their grid.
STEP 4
Play the video – sound only, with the screen blank. Students cross out each word they hear in their grid and afterwards compare what they heard / didn’t hear with a partner.
STEP 5
Display or hand out a copy of the lyrics so that students can see where their words appear in the song and check new vocabulary if necessary.
STEP 6
Put students in pairs and assign each pair two lines of the song. Tell them that they are going to think about images to include in a video for the song. What images will they include to illustrate their two lines? Encourage them to use the lines as a starting point. It isn’t enough to say “Some green trees and red roses.” (Describe the trees. Where are they? Any people? Who are they? What are they doing? etc.)
STEP 7
Give them a few minutes to come up with some ideas and then ask each pair to tell the rest of the class what images they agreed on.
STEP 8
Now play the video so that students can compare their images with the ones used in the video. How many can they remember? You could do this as a competition: put students in groups and get them to write down as many animals / geographical features as they can. Award two points for words they know in English and one point for words in their own language.
STEP 9
Finish off by choosing some questions for students to discuss from these teflpedia pages: Animals, Animal Rights, The Environment.
Giraffe Fight
Posted: July 7, 2014 Filed under: Documentary, lesson plan | Tags: Africa, giraffe, prediction, speaking, visualization, vocabulary 4 Comments
Giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis play fighting at Marakele National Park, Limpopo, South Africa by Derek Keats is licensed under CCBY2.0
MAIN ACTIVITIES Visualization, speaking, gap fill, vocabulary acquisition, prediction.
SUITABLE FOR Teens and adults, Pre-Advanced (B2.2) and above
TEACHER’S NOTES (Click here for a pdf of the Teacher’s Notes.)
STEP 1
Tell students that they are going to listen to something with their eyes closed. After listening, they tell a partner about the images they visualized. Who did they see? Where? What were they doing? Why? etc. Play from 00:25 to 01:02 (sound only).
STEP 2
Students tell each other what they visualized in as much detail as possible. Ask a couple of students to tell the rest of the class what they talked about. Did most people have similar ideas?
STEP 3
Play the clip again, this time with both sound and images. Students (in pairs) answer the questions in step 1 based on what they saw. (Two male giraffes are going to fight over a female in the African desert.)
STEP 4
Tell students that they are going to read a description of the fight. Display or give them a copy of the script. They read it quickly and say which word which is out of place.
STEP 5
Now they work together to replace the word banana** with another word (a different one for each banana).
STEP 6
Play the video from 01:05 to 03:23 so that students can compare what they wrote with the words used in the documentary. (rival, chance, blows, desert, fight, legs, reign)
STEP 7
Students vote on which giraffe will win – the old bull or the young rival. Play the clip until 04:35 and ask how the the old giraffe won (He ducked and aimed a blow at his rival’s underbelly). Tell students that the young giraffe didn’t die; he was just knocked out.
STEP 8
Say that the clip comes from the first episode of the BBC series Africa, and encourage those who like nature programmes to look for more David Attenborough documentaries and watch them in English. If you have a class wiki, students can look for nature clips on YouTube, upload them and comment on each other’s choices.
** The banana idea comes from this post about different ways to do a gap fill / cloze on David Petrie’s blog.
All at C 