I often use videos in class, but sometimes I like to take my EM Normandie students to the multimedia lab so they can work on a video in more depth at their own pace. Of course, you can always provide a printed worksheet, but I find it's more effective and motivating to create an interactive video with integrated questions, comments, and feedback. There are several sites that allow you to do that (Zaption and PlayPosit, for example), but to make this video I used Edpuzzle, which is easy to use and free. You can find the original video here. If you don't have a multimedia lab, you could get your students to work on an interactive video as a flipped classroom activity at home. I also created a quiz based on the transcript, which I've embedded below. To finish the lesson, I used this Travel Agency Simulation, which is always fun.
The Academy Awards Ceremony (aka the Oscars) takes place this Sunday, so to get you in the right frame of mind, why not test your knowledge of movie history with this fun quiz?
How much do you know about Google, the world's most popular search engine? Test your knowledge with this quiz I created for my EM Normandie students. You can download the original PowerPoint presentation here. I'll give more details about the rest of my 'Google lesson' tomorrow.
Wondering where you should go on holiday? Looking for inspiration for that perfect holiday destination? Complete this quick quiz to say what you want from your holiday and you'll be matched with a destination that could be just what you’re looking for.
COMMENTS I used the quiz along with this role play as part of a lesson about choosing the perfect holiday destination. I also did a PowerPoint that you can download here. The focus of the lesson was asking for and giving/making advice and suggestions. If the students have mobile devices to access to the internet they can do the quiz in groups, but it also works well as a class activity using a videoprojector. As a follow-up lesson, you could use this travel agency simulation.
The author of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, has died aged 89. This from ODN gives a short overview of her life and work. Watch the video, then do the quiz below.
TRANSCRIPT Nelle Harper Lee, who won the Pulitzer prize for fiction for her book To Kill a Mockingbird has died at 89 years old. The author was born on April 28th, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. In 1949 she moved to New York, where she worked as an airlines reservation clerk while pursuing a writing career. Eight years later she submitted the manuscript for To Kill a Mockingbird to J.B. Lippincotts and Co., and after some rewrites it was published, receiving both critical and commercial acclaim. The story became an American national institution, and a defining text on the racial troubles in the Deep South. A film adaption was released in 1962 and became an instant hit. But it wasn't until last year that the world got new work from Harper Lee, when Go Set a Watchman, a prequel to her original work, was released. Publisher Random House confirmed the news this afternoon and tweeted, 'Today we lost a beautiful writer.'
Could a tax on sugary products, or sugar tax, help reduce child obesity? This video looks at some of the issues involved as well as taking us into a Victorian sweet shop. After watching the video, you can test your knowledge of prepositions by doing the quiz below.
QUIZ
VOCABULARY & IDIOMS 1. Confectionery is a collective term for sweets and chocolates. 2. If something leaves you with a sour taste (in your mouth), it gives you an unpleasant feeling or memory. • His experience with corporate executives had left him with a sour taste in his mouth. 3. The sweet spot is the part of a surface that is the best or most effective possible place to hit something. • The new tennis rackets are lighter, stronger, and have a bigger sweet spot. In the report, the expression is used the mean the best time (obviously playing on the word 'sweet').
LESSON IDEAS 1. The sugar tax is a good subject for classroom discussion or debate. You can find links to online resources below. 2. Get students to produce a poster campaign to encourage people to eat less sugar. 3. Get students to produce an infographic about the sugar tax. Piktochart is a great free tool for creating infographics. 4. Use the transcript below for more intensive language work (vocabulary, tenses, grammar).
TRANSCRIPT PRESENTER: Walking into this traditional sweet shop is like stepping back in time. The shelves are stacked with confectionery born in Victorian Britain, but talk of a sugar tax is leaving the owner with a sour taste. Several of Martin Peet's suppliers have been going since the nineteenth century, and he fears a tax could kill off a fragile industry. SWEET SHOP OWNER: Eighteen nineties was a big boom time for making boiled sweets, when mining was taking place. Lots of people were ... started producing different flavours. Why should we pick on these people and start putting taxation on what was part of our heritage? PRESENTER: But for sugar tax supporters, 2016 could be the sweet spot. Scandinavian countries have had such taxes, and in 2012 France and Hungary joined the list, followed by Mexico in 2014, and most recently Belgium. Now India, the Philippines, and Indonesia have all said they are studying similar levies. But opponents say taxes provide no health benefits. VICKY PRYCE, ECONOMIST: In fact, the reason for obesity is not just sugar or other products that come into our drinks and food, but a lot of it is down to exercise. So it is quite odd in some ways to be looking at areas where actually the business impact is going to be quite significant. PRESENTER: Britain is expected to publish its strategy on child obesity later this month, with the government insisting nothing is off the table.
IDIOMS 1. To count your blessings means to realize that there are good things about your situation, as well as bad ones. This phrase is often used for telling someone that they should not complain. • School children today should count their blessings. At least they're not beaten for talking in class as we were. 2. I'll believe it when I see it is something that you say to show that you do not think something will happen, and you will not believe it until it does happen. • He says he's going to decorate the house, but I'll believe it when I see it.
As it's coming up to Valentine's Day, I guess that many teachers will be taking the opportunity to focus on the topic of love and romantic relationships. Here's an activity I created for my EM Normandie students using a really great online tool called Sentence Shuffle. You have to put the sentences in chronological order from the beginning to the end of a relationship. Just click here or on the image below to begin. You can also do the activity offline by downloading the worksheet and cutting the sentences into strips. Or use the excellent Cambridge Flashcard Maker to create some nice looking cards.
NOTE There is no one correct answer to this activity. The 'correct order' in the activity was the one I entered. However, your students may disagree, depending on their culture or religion. So, there's a lot of potential for discussion.
Here's a quiz I created for my EM Normandie students on the topic of 'Health and Illness' with FlipQuiz. FlipQuiz is a free online tool that provides educators with a quick way to create gameshow-style boards for the classroom using an interactive whiteboard or videoprojector. There are thirty questions in six categories. Click here to begin. And see all my FliqQuiz quizzes here.
TIPS You can change the text size in the Game Settings (bottom left). You can also double the number of points, which I usually do on the last round to make things even more exciting! And, of course, some sort of prize for the winning team is also nice.
LESSON IDEA Get your students to make their own FlipQuiz quizzes and share them.
This 60-second video illustrates how a modern car (in this case a Vauxhall) is manufactured in just 8 hours using an efficient and largely automated production line.
COMMENT This video would be ideal for teachers who want to illustrate the use of the passive when describing a process. I've embedded a sequencing activity below, but there are lots of other things you could do with the transcript. For example, there are very few sequence markers (First, next, etc.), so one activity could be to add those to the text. Or create a gap-fill activity by removing all the passive verbs.
QUIZ
TRANSCRIPT Steel coil is unrolled and flattened. Flattened steel is pressed to body panels. Pressed parts are assembled by robots and production operators. The car is sealed, primed and painted. Wiring, sound-proofing, upholstery and cockpit are added. Engine, brakes, suspension and exhaust are fitted by robots. Seats, wheels and doors and fitted last. Car goes through stringent quality tests before being driven off the line.
Today is the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland's most famous poet. Rabbie Burns, as the Scottish people call him, was born on January 25th, 1759, and every year on Burns' Night, Scottish people all over the world celebrate his birthday by reading his poems, eating haggis (a traditional Scottish meat dish) and drinking whisky. Many of his poems are in the Scots language and you will hear some in the video. You can download a worksheet for the video here and a full transcript here. The British Council also has some great interactive activities based on this video.
QUIZ
BURNS NIGHT Burns Night, in effect a second national day, is celebrated on Burns's birthday, 25 January, with Burns suppers around the world, and is more widely observed in Scotland than the official national day, St. Andrew's Day. The first Burns supper was held in 1802, and the format has changed little since. The supper starts with a general welcome and announcements, followed with the Selkirk Grace. After the grace comes the piping and cutting of the haggis, when Burns's famous "Address to a Haggis" is read and the haggis is cut open. The event usually allows for people to start eating just after the haggis is presented. At the end of the meal, a series of toasts and replies is made. This is when the toast to "the immortal memory", an overview of Burns's life and work, is given. The event usually concludes with the singing of "Auld Lang Syne". [source: Wikipedia]
You've probably heard of the IoT (Internet of Things). But what is it? Multinational e-commerce giants such as IBM, Google and Samsung are moving fast to develop products and services that are designed to support the IoT. It is widely viewed as one of the most significant opportunities arising from the rapid development of digitally-enabled devices and transactions. In this engaging short animated video (one of six that will help you understand Davos 2016), the World Economic Forum team explain what the IoT is, highlight some of the key opportunities and also threats posed. A great visual introduction to what will become a vital part of digital business in the near future. Via tutor2u.
QUIZ
LESSON IDEAS • Stop the video after six seconds and see if your students can answer the question. • The voiceover contains a lot of numbers and passives, which could be the focus of a lesson. • Discuss the questions raised by the video. Will data be collected, shared and stored to improve our lives? Or will it be used to control us?
TRANSCRIPT What do an umbrella, a shark, a house plant, the brake pads in a mining truck and a smoke detector have in common? They can all be connected online, and in fact, they are. By 2022 it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. If all things are connected, it will shift the way we do business and use resources, and will eventually yield massive amounts of data. But who owns this data and how safely will it be kept? By 2020, around 22% of the world's cars will be connected to the internet. That's 290 million vehicles. And by 2024, more than 50% of home internet traffic will be used by appliances and devices rather than just for communication and entertainment. In this scenario, what if your car or home got hacked? The internet of things raises huge questions on privacy and security that have to be addressed by governments, corporations, and consumers. But if we get things right, it will also bring unprecedented efficiency to processes that will no longer be offline. Imagine cows in a farm being monitored to obtain health reports that will help farmers feed them better, or tracking the behaviour of complex industrial machinery, preventing accidents and shortening downtime for maintenance. All kinds of devices will be able to gather and share any type of information from their environment, seamlessly organizing themselves to make our lives smarter and safer. A world where all things are connected is going to bring endless opportunities for most human activities, but it will depend on us whether we are going to take advantage of it, or let it take advantage of us. Will data be collected, shared and stored to improve our lives? Or will it be used to control us?
Since my earlier David Bowie quiz proved quite popular, I thought I would do another one based exclusively on lyrics from his earlier classic songs. If you are interested, you can find lyrics to virtually all his songs here (there's no 'Laughing Gnome', though!).
