Ideas for using EP Languages video lessons

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Tips for using EP Languages video lessons

How to use the lessons with students of mixed abilities.

If the video is covering a relevant topic for your class but it might be slightly too complex or too long, you can try some of the following strategies:

• Just use small snippets of the video
• Only assign the first 2 or three sections of the lesson. Click here for a guide which shows how to do this.
• Encourage students to use the context of the video to help establish the meanings of words that they don't know. 

Ideas of pre-viewing activities:

• Video with no sound: Play the video to the whole class with no sound and get them to imagine what the characters might be saying.
• Brainstorm the vocabulary: Prior to beginning the video and the lesson, get the students to brainstorm the language they might expect to hear.
• Pre-teach the vocabulary: Use the vocabulary lists in each of the lessons to help prepare students for the vocabulary they will encounter in the video. You can assign the vocabulary lists in each of our learning modes.

Different ways students can complete the lessons:

• Use the videos to introduce new vocabulary.
• Work together as a whole class: The teacher plays the video through their computer and students complete the questions. The questions could be projected on the board or on a handout if the students don't have individual devices.
• Work at their own pace: Teachers can assign the video lessons to students to complete at their own pace. This way, the students can repeat the videos as many times as necessary and they can pause where necessary. This could be done in class or outside of class time as part of a flipped learning programme, allowing more class time to engage in other activities.
• Workstations: If your students don't have access to their own devices, and you don't have very many in the classroom, you could set up a video lesson as a workstation in the classroom as one of many activities that the students need to complete.

Some ideas for post viewing activities:

• Make a vocabulary bank: Following the completion of the lesson, students could make a vocabulary bank of useful words and expressions which they can use in their own written work.
• Shadow reading: Once your students are familiar with a particular video from completing the lesson, students attempt to speak in time with the characters on screen. Put students into small groups (you'll need the same number of students in a group as characters in the scene) and have them choose roles, or do this as a whole-class activity with groups of students following one character. You'll need to repeat this several times - students will get better each time. By trying to speak in sync with the characters on screen, they'll be replicating key features of connected speech.
• Students can complete the video production task as part of the lesson where they create their own video similar to the one in the lesson.