Before we start, please watch this video:
What would you use it for in class?
Here are some ideas of mine:
1. Why did the boy try to move the tree? Surely he knew he wasn't strong enough for that?
2. Why was the boy first joined by the children? Why did they look so happy?
3. Discuss: "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” How would you define the boy? A born leader? A crazy kid? Or just someone who felt that he had to do something?
4. Why did the people join the boy?
5. Give the clip a new title.
6. If you had to define the force that had moved the tree, what would you say? Was it the boy's initiative? Or the team spirit of everybody else? Both? Something else?
7. Can we always change the circumstances in which we live, or are we sometimes helpless? Discuss.
8. How important is team work in today's society?
9. How important is team work in a language classroom?
10. Do you feel that you are a part of a team in your classroom? Why/not?
Now retell the story in the first person singular, pretending to be one of the people you saw in the clip.
Task 2 was creating activities around a video for students to complete at home. We learnt about Grockit, which enables the teacher to ask the students some questions while they are watching the video. The questions can be timed so that they appear exactly where we want them in the video. It is good for posting videos as homework as it is an equivalent to watching a video in class and stopping it whenever we want our students to tell us what is going on or to predict what will happen next. You can read more about Grockit in one of Nik's blogs. Here is the link.
Unfortunately Grockit videos can't be embedded yet, but here is my example.
The video I have used here is something I have dug up from the archives of my first wiki. It sends a really strong positive message, so I started thinking about exploiting it further and ended up with the lesson plan you can see above.
