Teaching with video used to be difficult to set up. You would have to wheel in the ancient school TV, or more recently have enough fully prepared laptops for whatever your chosen activity was. However, these days probably every student is carrying a wireless, internet-connected, high defintiton video player and you can point them at any video on YouTube with a google search or if you’re more prepared a QR code.
This opens a whole world of access to videos which students often find far more compelling than printed texts. And even better, students can produce their own videos and share them easily with the rest of their classmates.
On this page, I will begin collecting resources and activities to fully utilise this powerful ‘new’ classroom tool.
Short and funny video clips
A collection of short, funny videos which can be used in an English class.
Conundrums
The Astra Nova school produces these short conundrums which are fantastic for class discussions. The quality varies but if you sort by popular, you will find the most interesting videos. My favourites are the classic Lake Conundrum, The Pizza Counundrum, The Bike Conundrum and The Chocolate Conundrum. I often teach Business English phrases for agreeing and disagreeing before presenting the video. In small groups students must discuss and decide and present a single answer to the conundrum. Once each group has presented their answer they can tdebate the other groups as to why their answer is correct.
Videos for describing action
Using video clips to practise the describing action with the present continuous.
Who lives in a house like this?
A guessing game where students see photos or video of each other’s rooms and have to discuss who they belong to.