Here is my first attempt at using glogster.
I learned about this application after watching the learning video by Russell Stannard.
I decided to use it as a kind of treasure hunt.
Students watch the videos or follow the links to answer the set of questions.
Click here for the direct link to this glog.
I really loved playing around with this application. The potential for unleashing your creativity is amazing.
You need to give it go.
Summer is here and it’s not just the weather that changes.
Ask the students the following question:
How do we know it’s summer?
Where do people go during the summer holidays and what activities do they do?
Elicit summer words from the students and ask them to write the words on a piece of paper.
ex. ice cream, sunglasses, clothes, BBQ, music, movies blockbusters, festivals etc.
The Special guests in today’s class are Vampire Weekend
Students watch the following music video and check if the video contains any of their words.
Song lyrics:
Students watch the video several times and listen to the lyrics. Give the students the worksheet below and ask them to fill in the gaps.
Students check if they were correct by watching the following video with the song lyrics
Karaoke version:
Song meanings:
Ask the students what they think the song is about.
Show students what the band said about the song:
“The lyrics refer to a member of my family who gave up eating meat when we invaded Iraq. They were horrified by what was happening internationally and they lost their taste for meat. It wasn’t even necessarily an overt protest, it was a physical reaction.”
Ask the following questions:
What do you think about this reaction to war?
How did you react to the invasion of Iraq?
Have you ever done anything so drastic in reaction to something? (ex. death in family, failing exams etc.)
I got the following activity from my great friend and fellow esl teacher, Jeremy. It never fails to work and the students have lots of fun trying to figure out the secret rule.
Tell the students that you’re having a summer BBQ party and you are making a guest list.
Say that you are bringing apples to the party. Ask students what they will bring?
Students have to answer by saying ‘I will bring a _______’
The secret rule is that the next item must start with the next letter in the alphabet.
If they say, ‘I will bring a bottle of wine’ then the teacher will say ‘okay you can come to my party’ but if they say something that does not begin with b then say, ‘I’m sorry you can’t come’. Write the list of the people who can come to your party. Keep playing until all the students discover the rule and everyone joins the party.
You can make up other rules for this game. The next item could start with the last letter of the previous item. ex. I will bring chocolate, I will bring eggs.
Ask students if this is the first time they have seen Vampire weekend.
Ask them what they thought about the song we played previously and the interview.
Video listening comprehension:
Students listen to the interview and answer the questions on the worksheet below.
Vampire Weekend – Giving up the gun
Tennis is officially cool with this video, featuring RZA and Jake Gyllenhaal. If only ‘Wimbledon’ was this exciting
Students questions:
1.How many times do you see the girl in red hitting the tennis ball?
I counted 22.
Read the following passage:
The heroine of the video isn’t an amazing tennis player, but she has heart. She stays calm despite the unfairness of it all. Giving Up the Gun centers around Jenny (a friend of Vampire Weekend) and a number of opponents whom she goes up against in several matches; there’s a samurai, a gigantic woman, Joe, and Jake (to name a few) and she beats all of them.
2.Do you remember a time when you didn’t give up, even when things were unfair?(write an anecdote)
Song meanings:
Ask the students what they think the song is about.
Show students what the band said about the song:
I got the idea for the song from a book my Dad gave me called Giving Up The Gun. It’s a history book about the time when Japan expelled all the foreigners from the country, closed off all trade, and stopped using guns and reverted back to the sword. It seems unimaginable now that humanity could willingly go back to an older technology. It got me thinking about whether you could give up the things that you have and go back to a simpler way of life.
If you were to give up something, what would it me?
How could you make your life more simple?
I hope you all have a wonderful summer. Please let me know if you have any extra suggestions for this lesson.
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Music clip: Quadron – Buster Keaton
Ask the students to watch the music video and write down the words they see.( The words start after 50 secs)
Play this music video a few times:
Tell the students that we are now going to use some of these phrases and words to discuss and debate issues. Students have to check to see if they managed to find the words we focus on.
Look at the following slogans from the music clip:
stay fresh!!! Ready to shine A new star driven by desire be cool dream catcher
These positive slogans could all be used to advertise a product.
What type of product do you think you could sell with each slogan?
Ask students to look at the following slogans and match them with the products.
Click here for a link to many ideas of popular advertising slogans
Slogans:
I’m Luvin’ it Impossible is nothing It’s the real thing The best a man can get Just do it
Product:
Gillette McDonald’s X-Box Adidas Coca-cola
Show the students the following slide show to check if they are correct:
In groups students think of a product and a catchy slogan to sell it. Students make a poster of their advertisement.
The following lists are shown in the music video(1.40)
Warning maybe NSFC (Not safe for the classroom)
This is only appropriate for adult students as the phrase “have sex with honey” may be considered inappropriate with less mature students. I suppose it all depends on what your students are like and how you think they may react to this sentence.
Ask the students if they know what the word ‘breadwinner’ means.
‘One whose earnings are the primary source of support for one’s dependents.’
Ask the students who the breadwinner is in their family.
Ask the students to make pairs. One students is given the ‘work list’ and the other student is given the ‘home list’. Each student will read their list as a dictation and the other will write what they here. They will each check to see if they managed to write down the list correctly.
Ask the students what their thoughts are about the female who made the list.
Ask what lists they tend to write during the week.(shopping/house work etc.)
Ask the students what is expected of them at home and at work.
‘They always want more’ (1.01)
Who in your life wants more? Boss/ partner/friends/siblings
Students have to think about their expectations and write their own home/work list.
Students discuss their lists with the other students.
Homework idea: Students bring a list they have made into the class. Put all the lists into a box. Give the lists back to the students making sure that they do not get back their own list. Each student has to decide who the list belongs to and why. Students present their findings to the class and discover if they are correct.
Students use this ‘wordle’ to think what life means to them now and what it meant to them throughout the different stages of their life. Use this as a basis for an essay topic.
Childhood (1.12) ‘Teenagehood‘(3.14) adulthood (2.40)
Some other suggestion for the students to think about:
Time – Person of the year (2.20) – What award would you like to be given?
Think about the many contrasts throughout life (2.26) :
rise/fall slower/faster yes/ no
Can you think of other contrasts?
Using the title ‘What is life to you‘, students write a speech and then present it to the class.
Show this clip at the students discretion only. Advise the students that the following clip is a little controversial and that if they are of a sensitive disposition then maybe it’s best that they do not watch the clip. This clip contains risky language and some scenes of violence. You could easily edit it so that the words are deleted from the video.
Start a discussion about censorship in videos. Ask the following questions.
1. Why do you think they use the “f-Word” ?
2. What do you think about the use of violence in this clip?
3. What impact did the violence and language have on you?
4. Is it really necessary to include the violence and f-word?
5. Does it relate to the song and video? Why?
6. Is this clip being controversial just to provoke people, which will in turn generate more sales through the media exposure?
Students choose from 3 scenes in the clip. They write a dialogue for the scene and then act it out.
(0.43) Scene outside ‘burger world’. Dialogue between the boss of ‘burger world’ and the protagonist.
(2.05) Scene with the man robbing the store. Dialogue between the store clerk and the protagonist.
(3.25) Scene with the police confrontation. Dialogue between the policeman and the protagonist.
Students listen to the clip a few times and write down as many lyrics as they can.
The students compare the lyrics they have written with the other students.
The students use the lyrics to help them write a story about the clip.
Ask some questions for them to think about.
Why did the man do this?
What were his responsibilities?
Game– In groups students try to write down as many jobs as they can in a set time limit (5mins).
Each group reads out the jobs they have written and if the other groups have the same word then they score it out. The groups only get points if they have a different word from the other groups. Subtract points for wrong spelling.
Word magnet-(My first attempt)
Please click here to watch Russell Stannard’s training video about word magnets.
If students have computers in your class room then this application is really good. If they don’t then use sheets of paper.
Students have to write down as many job words as they can and then separate them into what they consider to be worthwhile jobs and not worthwhile.
Let’s debate about jobs–
When they have divided the jobs into categories the students have a debate about their opinions and why they consider some jobs more worthwhile than others.
Call out a job and have the students who think it is worthwhile go to one side of the classroom and the other students go to the other side. Both sides think about what they can say to support their arguments in a debate. Each side is given a time limit to present their ideas.
Some final words
Students have to think about and then discuss what they think is important in life and what responsibilities they have.
Music video: “The Mynabirds-The Number’s don’t lie”
This is a lesson about routines and how to make them more bearable.
1. Elicit from students the activities they do on a daily basis and think about how many times they have done these activities so far in their lifetime.
2. Students watch the following music video and write down the daily routines they see.
3.Student’s look at the following wordle and put in order the routines that happen during a day.
4. Show the students the music video again. This time ask them do think how the man feels about his daily routine.
5. Ask some questions.
Where does the man go everyday and what does he do?
Does he have a happy life and why?
6. Show the students the following picture:
7. Ask students how similar it is to their own lives.
8. Student’s create their own daily routine cycle.
9. Show the video for a last time and ask them to think about how the man makes his life more bearable.
10. Ask the students how they make their lives more exciting and what do they do to bring colour into their lives.
11. Ask students if they had any experiences with imaginary friends when they were children.
12. Look at the cartoon and think about what they can do differently in their routines to make life more interesting.
13. Student’s suggest how they can change their routine and write what their perfect routine would be.
14. Student’s look at the following daily routine of Tiger Woods:
( If they are adults you can make a joke that this routine fails to mention his most strenuous exercise which is keeping up with his many affairs.)
15. The Students discuss Tiger Woods routine.
16. Using this routine as an example the students choose a celebrity and write what they think their daily routine would be. They could present their routine with the picture of the celebrity to other class members. The Pictures and routines could be made into a class poster
Show this clip at the students discretion only. Advise the students that the following video is a little controversial and that if they are of a sensitive disposition then maybe it’s best that they do not watch the clip.
Explain to the students that there are two rooms in this video. They have to describe the rooms.
Student A tries to guess the order of each word as seen in the music video.
Students watch the video and check if they have the correct order.
Discussion – Students discuss how provocative they thought the video was and how it made them feel.
Explain to the students that they are investigators at the scene of the crime. They have to write about the ‘space in between’ and using the evidence in the video/wordle they have to decide what happened before the scene of the crime.
Students present their stories to the class.
The class vote on the best investigator.
Fotobabble: Take a picture of each students sketch and upload it onto fotobabble. The students have to use their story to talk about what happened over their photo.
Update– Here is a recent interview with the movies director(Rupert Sanders) about the video:
Pitchfork: Did you talk with him about the meaning of the song and why he wanted those visuals specifically?
RS: Yeah, for him it was very much about the neglect that has led a relationship to this– the demise of love and passion. He was very specific in how the room caught fire and that they had killed each other, and how the people around them didn’t really care.
Pitchfork: When I first watched it, I thought the other people were somehow in on the killings.
RS: It’s hard because you want to be elusive about what’s going on but not so confusing that there was no train of thought. If you look closely, there’s a knife next to Trent and Mariqueen’s holding a spike of a champagne glass. You don’t really know why the other girl is laughing on the phone rather than calling 911. There’s something a little more disconcerting and creepy when the audience can play more of a part in figuring things out.
Music video; “Russia” – Ramona Falls
This song is perfect for talking about the perfect date and discussing places.
1. Elicit places where the students would go on a romantic date.
2. Elicit gifts they would take to their date.
Give students a copy of the wordle and ask them to separate the words into the following categories:
1. Where would you go on a romantic date?
2. What gifts would you buy?
Students watch the movie and put the places and gifts in the order that they see them by writing a number next to the word on the wordle.
What does the female have on her jacket? A red rose.
What colour is the females t-shirt? Red and white.
What colour is the origami crane? orange.
What does the female do to the origami crane? She burns it.
What animal is at the fairground? A frog.
What does the dog do to the female? The toilet.
What does the female throw at the man? A book.
What 4 activities does the man do to try to catch the female?
Running, swimming, cycling, riding a horse, riding a motorbike.
What is attached to the rope that the man attached around the females neck? A piano.
How does the female escape from the church? By helium balloons.
Make anecdotes:
Students write notes about the best and worst date they have had.
They practice talking about these dates to the other students.
Students discuss what would be the perfect date and about the meaning of the phrase; “too little too late”. ex. Have you ever been too little too late with a school project or exam.
Talking about places – fotobabble(First attempt)
Once again I headed to the website of the wonderful tech guru; Russell Stannard to find out how to use fotobabble. It’s a very easy application to upload a photo and record your thoughts. I think this would work wonderfully as a task for students, either as homework or a project in class time.
Click below to watch my first attempt at ‘fotobabble’.
Using the places in the video, students have to talk about their experiences at one of these places and record it on fotobabble. Ask the students to choose a photo they have taken or have found on the internet
Here is a slideshow of the places featured in the vid:
Students watch “Let’s write a book-Field Music” and try to find the words.
Give the students each a copy of the ‘wordle’. Drill the words in the ‘wordle’ and check for understanding. Ask the students to circle the words they see in the video. Watch the video three times as the images are very fast. Students count how many words they found.
Add some words to the wordle which are not in the video to make the task more difficult.
To make this activity more competitive put the students into groups.
Ask students what other things they saw which were not in the wordle. e.x. periscope, rhino etc.
I learned how to use this application by watching this helpful step by step guide by Russell Stannard.
I circled all the objects in the movie to show the students where the words are.
Check it out by clicking here.
If students know how to use ‘voice thread‘ then they could add their own comments to the video.
[This is my very first attempt. If I did this again I would choose a brighter colour to highlight the images.]
Explain to the students that the song title was called “let’s write a book”. Tell them that they are not going to write a book but they are going to write a story using as many words from the ‘wordle’ as they can.
Esl Imaginarium
Esl Imaginarium 