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Using Video and Story in the classroom | Jamie Keddie

Let’s start with a video – a short film that was commissioned by the Irish Film Board in 2009.

Its title is, quite simply, “Teeth”. Perhaps you’ve seen it before?

Teeth from Noreen Fitzgerald on Vimeo.“Teeth”: directed by Ruairi O’Brien and John Kennedy, and produced by Noreen Fitzgerald.

I wonder what you thought of that? I have used this short film in a number of teacher training contexts. Speaking from experience, I know that it has a particularly wide appeal. Regardless of people’s age or background, it seems to be universally enjoyed.

There are other reasons why, as a teacher, I am attracted to “Teeth.” I love its economical simplicity. This is a story reduced down it to the essential ingredients only. The lack of spoken dialogue forces us to work with the visual narrative – the story told in moving images. At under two minutes long, I have heard “Teeth” referred to as a “super short film”. This is important as it ensures that we don’t have to worry about turning the classroom into a cinema – another key consideration.

But most importantly, it’s the story that I love. The bite-sized narrative allows us to explore some fundamental issues of what it is to be human: friendship, schadenfreude (link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude), and justice – all wrapped up in one delightful comedy.

So what would you do with it in the classroom?

It’s a question that I have asked many language teachers in many parts of the world. Perhaps the most common ideas are to introduce a topic (e.g. fishing, practical jokes, friendship, or teeth) or to practise a grammar point (e.g. the present continuous to talk about what the two characters are doing).

Either of these ideas might be quite successful, but I can’t help thinking that they underuse the video and neglect the story that it offers.

What do I mean by that? Well, it is important for teachers to be aware that there is never just one story. We might read the same book, watch the same film, or listen to the same podcast. However, we all experience it in a different way.

We make different connections and associations. We ask silent questions and make predictions. We look for meaning and interpret symbols. We judge protagonists and evaluate their decisions. We identify with characters and form bonds with them. We put ourselves into the story and adopt experiences as if they were our own. We find our own stories within the story. We make our own meaning.

In the language classroom, it is this divergence of interpretation that can make a short film like “Teeth” such a powerful piece of material.

But how do you harness that power? How do you turn a 2-minute narrative into a meaningful discussion of the story? Join me at ELTOC 2020 to find out.

ELTOC 2020ELTOC 2020

How do you use video in your classroom? This is a question that I have been asking teachers ever since YouTube was launched in 2005. Over that time, I have come to a conclusion: there is a tendency for us to focus on the video and neglect the story that it offers. In my ELTOC talk, I would like to share some activities in which technology takes a backseat and good old-fashioned storytelling comes to the front of the class.

Register now for the ELTOC 2020 waitlist! I look forward to seeing you for my talk.

Jamie Keddie started off with a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Realizing that he actually wanted to be a musician, he spent most of his twenties studying at Leeds College of Music in Yorkshire, England. After that, he worked as a singer-piano player on ships, but nothing too glamorous.

In 2001 Jamie moved to Barcelona and became an English teacher. Gradually, his passion moved from music to education, video and storytelling.

As a trainer, Jamie has shared his ideas and insights with teachers and educators in over 40 countries. He is the author of Images (Oxford University Press, 2008), Bringing online video into the classroom (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Videotelling: YouTube Stories for the Classroom (LessonStream Books, 2017).


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Animate your Classes with Video! | OUP

young children watching videos togetherVideos are a great resource for language teaching and learning!

Students enjoy watching animated shows and videos on TV, on tablets, and on phones. Videos can motivate students to engage with language, so it’s easy to understand why teachers want to bring more videos into their English classrooms.

There are strong pedagogical reasons for including videos in your language teaching. Videos bring language alive. Students can see and hear language being used in context.

Animated videos are particularly accessible because they make it easy to focus on specific language, and can appeal to a wider age range of students than live-action videos. Animated videos are ideal for providing language models with enough context to support meaning, and enough humour to engage students. Research shows that students respond positively to familiar characters, so if you use videos with characters students can identify, they not only bring the language to life but may also make students want to interact with the characters they’re watching!

Even with all of these great reasons to include video in English class, many teachers don’t. Why not? Teachers tell us that it’s hard to find interesting videos that use the language their students are learning. They aren’t sure where to look for appropriate videos, and when they do know where to look, they don’t have time to search through the videos available in order to find one that will work with a specific lesson. Often, the videos won’t work because the language is too hard, or the video is too long or too fast-paced. Even if teachers are successful in finding a video they think could work with their lesson, they often aren’t sure how to make the best use of it for language learning.

One of the most important things teachers can do when using a video in class is to make the video content as interactive as the rest of their lesson. We know it’s important for students to talk to each other, to ask and answer questions, to use gestures and movement to reinforce meaning, and to use language in a meaningful way. We should use videos in the same way. There’s no reason to make video watching a passive experience in class.

Here are some ways to make video watching fun, interactive, and effective:

  • Show the video without sound first. Then see what the students can remember about the video: body/hand movements and gestures, the situation and any words or phrases that they think are in the conversation.
  • Play the video with sound. Have students listen for specific words or phrases, and do something (like raising a hand) when they hear the target language.
  • Ask students a question before playing the video with sound. Have them listen for the answer.
  • Have students take a role and act out the video.

We’re excited that the 5th edition of Let’s Go will include videos to help animate your teaching. The conversation videos show students how to extend the Let’s Talk dialogues. The song and chant videos make the language even more memorable and entertaining by adding a visual component.

Two of the new videos are available for you to try out in class.

Extended Conversation Videos

The conversation videos extend Let’s Talk dialogues by adding relevant language students already know and showing body language and gestures in context. Interestingly, if students look closely, they’ll see characters using gestures and facial expressions that may be different from what they usually do. During the video, one of the Let’s Go characters always turns to the students to ask a question, in order to make students part of every conversation.

The video from Level One Unit Six is available for you to watch.

Here’s the transcript so you can see how familiar language is used to extend the basic conversation. The original conversation is in black. The added language is in red. Blue highlights the question students will answer.

[Cellphone buzzes]

Jenny: Hello?

Kate: Jenny?

Jenny: Yes. Oh, hi Kate. How are you?

Kate: I’m great. How are you?

Jenny: I’m great, too. It’s so nice today.

Kate: How’s the weather?

Jenny: It’s sunny.

Uh-oh. [thunder]

Kate: What was that?

Jenny: It’s rainy now.

Kate: How’s the weather today?

How could you use this in class?

  • Show the video without sound, and ask students to tell you what the conversation is about.
  • Play the video with sound. Have students listen and tell you what language they hear.
  • Have students answer Kate’s question, and then ask each other the same question.
  • Once students are comfortable with the language, have them watch without sound again, and tell you how Jenny is feeling based on her facial expressions
  • Let students role-play the conversation in pairs.

Song and Chant Videos

The song and chant videos make lesson language visible and memorable! Combining rhythm, music, and images allow students to use three of their senses and increases the amount of language they’ll remember. “Where are the bugs?” from Level One Unit Six is available now.

How could you use this in class?

  • Have students call out the names of objects they recognise in the video.
  • Have students decide on gestures for on, in, under, and by (e.g., placing a fist on a palm for ‘on’,). Students do the gestures as they listen to the song.
  • Have half of the class sing the questions and the other half answer. (Sing twice so everyone gets to ask and answer questions.)

Using videos that support your lessons can make the language more exciting, and real. The best videos for teaching language will reinforce the language you’re trying to teach. They’ll be short and will match your students’ pace.

Let’s Go fifth edition videos are all of these things – pedagogically sound, student tested, linguistically appropriate, short, understandable, and funny. Having the videos included with the coursebook units makes it easy to include them in your lessons.

Have fun animating your language teaching with Let’s Go!

Ritsuko Nakata, Karen Frazier, and Barbara Hoskins have spent 25 years working to improve the Let’s Go learning experience for teachers and their students. It is the only primary coursebook series that has had the same authors for all levels, resulting in a tightly controlled grammar syllabus that makes productive use of limited class time.


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Using Video in the ELT Classroom Q&A

woman using video cameraJamie Keddie is a teacher, trainer and storyteller who has shared his insights and ideas in over 40 different countries. He is the founder of Lessonstream, the resource site for teachers. He is the author of ‘Images’ (OUP 2009), ‘Bringing online video into the classroom’ (OUP 2014) and ‘Videotelling’ (Lessonstream Books, 2017). Jamie is also an associate trainer at Norwich Institute for Language Education.

Click here to check out Jamie’s most recent blog introducing his ‘Using Video in the ELT Classroom’ webinar series’. Missed the webinar? You can find it in our webinar library.

Where do you find your videos?

This is probably the question that I get asked the most so it is a good place to start.

The reality is that most of the videos that I use in the classroom are ones that I find by accident. We are all subjected to a constant stream of online content – through news sites or social media, for example. Once I see a video that I like, I immediately ask questions such as:

  • Would other people like this video as much as me?
  • Can I deconstruct the video into constituent parts (audio, stills, transcripts) and use these isolated components to get students thinking, speaking, writing or learning new language?
  • Can I find out more about the video and use the story behind it?

For me, it’s less about where or how I find videos, and more about recognising a good video when I see one.

What is wrong with using videos to introduce subjects?

In the webinar, I mentioned that I often ask teachers how they use video in the classroom. And in my experience, the most common answer is ‘to use them to introduce subjects and spark conversation’.

I didn’t want to imply that there is anything wrong with this approach. But I do feel that it is probably the weakest way to use video – a quick release approach in which the teacher presses play and delivers the video all at once.

Personally, I prefer to take a slow release approach: To look for ways to deconstruct the video, engage students and immerse them in the narrative. During the webinar, we explored three different deconstruction techniques: Using isolated audio, using isolated stills, and using a transcript-first approach.

How do you deal with technical issues and problems when using video in classroom?

Well, I suppose that the most familiar problem is losing or having no internet connection. Many teachers get around this by downloading videos from YouTube. When we download YouTube videos, we can store them on our devices and this allows us to display them in class without an internet connection. The problem is, however, that doing so is a breach of YouTube’s terms of services.

I suppose that my golden rule is to always have a back-up plan in case the technology fails. Not particularly useful, but surely important!

Have you ever shown your students a video you’ve filmed yourself?

Yes – absolutely! The video camera on your mobile phone is great for capturing spoken texts to take into the classroom. I often film my friends and family members and use the videos in class. Most of these are not public but I do have a YouTube channel which has a few videos like this one for example:

Would you give students the possibility to choose the videos?

I love tasks! Especially homework tasks where students choose videos that they like and then write about them. For example, ask students to go online and find an advert that they like. They can then describe it from start to finish, and put the narrative into words. But they shouldn’t say what the product it. In class, students can share their texts and guess what the mystery products are in each case.


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Using Video in the ELT Classroom

Jamie Keddie is a teacher, trainer and storyteller who has shared his insights and ideas in over 40 different countries. He is the founder of Lessonstream, the resource site for teachers. He is the author of ‘Images’ (OUP 2009), ‘Bringing online video into the classroom’ (OUP 2014) and ‘Videotelling’ (Lessonstream Books, 2017). Jamie is also an associate trainer at Norwich Institute for Language Education.

Can you believe it? – YouTube is over ten years old! During this time I have been working with teachers on ways of using videos in the English language classroom.

I often receive emails from other video-enthusiastic teachers that go like this: Hello Jamie. I just found this video on YouTube that I really like. I hope you don’t mind if I ask – what would you do with it in the classroom?

Here is an example of a video that a teacher sent me recently. It is titled: Googly-eyed Stubby Squid:

I don’t know about you, but I really like this video. So, let me put the question back to you: What would you do with this video in your classroom? How would you use it to teach English?

This is a task that I regularly set my own trainees. Suggestions will often fall into three different groups:

  1. To introduce a topic

In my experience, this is often the most common suggestion. In the case of the Googly-eyed Stubby Squid video, topics could include animals, colourful animals, unusual creatures, unusual pets, the sea, science, marine biology, etc.

There is nothing wrong with this approach. But wait! Shouldn’t we try to do something with video first? It is short in length but strong in narrative. How can we engage students with the story that it offers? This is exactly what I would like to demonstrate in the webinar.

  1. Listening comprehension

Another standard way to approach video is to focus on the spoken text. By spoken text, I am referring to the words that you hear – the monologues and dialogues that the video offers. As language teachers, we often consider that the audio contains the meat!

But wait! Authentic video can often be difficult to comprehend. Audio quality can be poor. People speak over each other. They make cultural references. They use low-frequency or technical words and phrases. So how do we deal with that? Again, this a question that I will be addressing in the webinar. 

  1. To teach [insert grammar point here]

Sometimes we recognise a possible language point in the material. In this case, for example, we could use the video to teach language for speculation (e.g. It could be a squid; It might be an octopus; Perhaps it’s a cuttlefish; It can’t be a crab; Etc.).

But wait – slow down! If we can regard the video as a story – if we can immerse students in the narrative – language can become more meaningful.

Jamie Keddie


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Integrating video content in the EFL classroom with International Express – Part 4

ievideopart4Fancy livening up your classroom with some ready-made video activities? This is the final part of a series of four articles in which Keith Harding and Rachel Appleby share ideas for using the stunning new International Express video material. Each unit of the course features a video directly related to the unit topic. Here, Rachel offers ideas for using the clip from Upper Intermediate Unit 6 – PleaseCycle, which focuses on conditionals.

Before you watch

Try out some of these ideas to get your students thinking before they watch.

1. Discussion

You can focus on cycling from a number of angles, for example, you can think of it as a sport, a relaxing activity, or a method of commuting. Or you could discuss cycling equipment, safety issues, or infrastructure (for example, cycle paths). Find out quickly, open-class, how many of your students…

a. own a bike

b. cycle regularly (why/why not?)

c. participate in biking activities

2. Decide if these statements are true or false:

a. There are more bicycles than residents in the Netherlands.

b. In Groningen (in the Netherlands), the station has ‘parking’ for 1,000 bikes.

c. Spain has over 100 bike-sharing schemes.

d. The ratio between the number of cyclists in a city, and the number of bike-car accidents, is in inverse.

e. An adult regular cyclist has a fitness level of someone 20 years younger.

3. Brainstorm benefits and barriers

Move the discussion more closely to the video content by focusing on the benefits of and barriers to cycling. Put students into two groups: one group brainstorms the benefits, the other the barriers. Elicit 1-2 ideas per group, for example:

Benefits: keeping fit; saves on petrol

Barriers: you may need a change of clothes; lack of cycle paths

4. KWL Chart

Again, before they watch, you could do this with the audio. It’s an idea that works well with most listening or reading texts. Ask students to fill in a “KWL” chart: this looks at “what I know already, what I want to find out”, and – later – “what I’ve learnt”. Ask them to complete the first two sections alone (Know and Want), and then compare with a partner. Then, finally complete the third section (Learnt) afterwards (see exercise 8). This is very student-driven, as they are effectively making their own comprehension task.

5. Check key words

Tell the students they are going to watch a video about a new London scheme which aims to get as many people cycling to work as possible. Before watching the video, check students understand, and can pronounce, the following:

a. workforce

b. initiative

c. portal

d. gamification

While you watch

To maximize the learning opportunities, you need to set tasks for the students to focus on. The following exercise is taken from the video worksheet that comes with the International Express Teacher’s Resource Book DVD. All the worksheets are also available for free here. You just need your Oxford Teachers’ Club log-in details to view them.

6. Multiple choice

videocontentIEpt4

After you watch

7. Quick questions

Ask students for an immediate response.

What did they think?

Would they like to be involved in such a scheme?

Would PleaseCycle work for their company? Why/Why not?

How competitive would they be?

Would they encourage their company to register, and log their trips on the app?

8. Return to the KWL Chart

Go back to the KWL chart (see exercise 4) to check and complete part three.

Refer back to the “benefits” and “barriers” lists they brainstormed too.

9. Going into more detail

Before playing the video again, ask students what they can remember about Aegus Media, and Stravel. Both are mentioned in the video. Watch the video again, asking students to take notes about each company. Afterwards, let them compare notes in small groups.

Use the following questions to focus their ideas:

a. What did Aegus Media achieve using PleaseCycle?

b. How was their success measured?

c. What plans are there for Stravel?

10. Create a proposal

Each small group should imagine they are working together at a company. They need to create a proposal to convince the company managers to start using PleaseCycle.

Answers:

Ex. 2

a. T

b. F: 10,000

c. T

d. T

e. F: 10 years

Ex. 6

1. a

2. c

3. c

4. b

5. c

6. b

7. a