Milking a Video Chat: Part 2

I love love love using short videos in class for input! I always try and milk the videos after spending a class (or many classes) getting through it… I do this with lots of reading… A couple of years ago I talked about one extension, and I thought it was about time I shared another!

Two weeks ago, there were some scheduling conflicts with my third grade classes and I was told that some of my classes would be cut to 15-20 kids instead of the usual 30ish. Rather than introducing anything new I wanted to come up with some sort of big review that incorporated lots of input through reading, but reading things they’d already been exposed to.

I printed two copies of 4 screen shots of recognizable scenes from the four shorts we’ve watched together this year. Dante’s lunch, Lily and the Snowman, The Present, and this Erste Christmas commercial that was released this year. As I set these screen shots on the floor in front of the class, I briefly reviewed the video. As I spoke about the video, I would pause and students would fill in the blank… for example “Dante es un perro loco, y vive en _____________” and kids would yell México. I put the four images on two different sides of the classroom and then split the class in half so they were on two teams.

Next, I threw hundreds of sentences (cut into strips) into the air above their heads…. Students on the two teams set to sorting the sentences into 4 piles, depending on which video the sentence went to. What was AWESOME was I already had all of these sentences written because we always read after a video…I just had to find the documents,  space the sentences out, print them, and cut them with a paper cutter.

Once a team had sorted all the sentences into piles, I told them they had to sequence the stories and put all of them in order. Students decided on their own which stories they wanted to sort. Since the video we did at the beginning of the year (Dante’s lunch) was easier and had less language, I encouraged students of lower proficiency to focus on that story first, while I pushed my higher students to the longer, story with much more vocabulary.

I loved that this allowed the class to work on two HUGE teams. Normally when we do sequencing activities like this, they work on teams of two or three. They really enjoyed the novelty of it. The lesson also felt naturally scaffolded as well… the first part wasn’t as challenging because they could look for key words, names or places and immediately know which video the sentence went to, while the second stage had them re-reading for more input but now they had to focus more on the details in order to sequence it all!

I can’t wait to do this with 5th grade! I am going to do it with 6 or 7 videos! I also want to try it with songs! My students love sequencing songs… Here is a video of third graders sequencing no lo tengo this week (for Wooly Week 2019)…

Since it is a common activity we do with our songs of the month, it would be fun to put lyrics of ALL of our songs of the month thus far AND Wooly songs! First they’ll sort to piles and then sequence the songs! I may have to allow computer access for this though so they can listen to the songs in groups as they sort… hmmm….. I will let you know if I ever try it!

Until next time,

HAPPY TEACHING!

Love,

La Maestra Loca