Tag Archives: video

Stonehenge: one of the world’s most ancient landmarks.

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and one of the most mysterious , too! In fact, over the course of years, scientists and philosophers have tried to attribute their origin to Merlin the wizard, to druids and even there are some crackpots who think aliens were involved but the truth is that even nowadays, after countless studies, nobody can say for certain why it was built. Was it an observatory,  a temple for sun worship, a healing centre, a place to bury the dead or  a giant calendar? How did they manage to carry the huge stones  and then, without any metal tools or machinery  build this impressive, unique structure?

I’ve selected this video about StoneHenge  for my elementary students. I have chopped the original from YouTube using TubeChop because it was too long and probably too difficult, too. Hope it is useful!

I have decided on the True/Flase exercise because I think it is  easier  than the Open Questions option.

AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO, DECIDE WHETHER THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ARE TRUE OR FALSE AND CORRECT THE FALSE ONES.
1. StoneHenge is in Northern England
2. According to the Medieval legend Merlin, the wizard, built it.
3. According to recent scientific studies,it was built 500 years ago.
4. Each of the stones weighs between fifty and eighty thousand pounds
5. The stones were carved using metal tools.

Fashion Victims?

Create your own stuff, Lesson Plan: Pre-Intermediate, Slides, , , , ,

So, once again, here we are, working with items of clothing and talking about fashion!

Though I cannot consider myself a shopaholic, I wouldn’t be completely honest with you if I didn’t tell you that, once a week, I leave husband and kids at home and I……. burn plastic!!!!  Well, I reckon I deserve a treat or two from time to time, don’t you think so?

Now, this is the activity I’m going to do with my fourth-year students (Pre-intermediate). I hope you find it useful!

The main activity will be displaying a video of a catwalk where students will have to be the commentators, describing what the models on the catwalk are wearing. A video such as this one … or maybe the one below it… to add more variety.

 

They have previously worked with patterns and materials (striped, checked, plain, silk, leather…etc) but I used some pictures from my iPad, so this vocabulary has already been covered.

Though I hate to say it, most of my students will know “trousers and shoes” but they will probably need some help with some other less common items of clothing. That’s why I’ve prepared these slides about clothes, divided into Elementary and Intermediate.

Grammar Snacks Videos

Audio, Grammar, Listening, ,

Grammar Snacks is a great site from the British Council  to watch videos about grammar shown in a natural way.

The videos offer the grammar in context with subtitles and although the videos might be a bit too long for an elementary student , it gives them the chance to read along and improve pronunciation. So, as the idiom goes, you kill two birds ( or maybe three) with the same stone. After watching the video there’s a clear grammatical explanation about when and how the grammar is used and some attractive interactive exercises.

So far, the site offers videos on the following :

♥Comparatives and Superlatives

♥There is/are  and It

♥This, these , that, those

♥The Present Continuous

♥The past Simple: regular and irregular verbs

♥To Be: Present and Past

♥Countable and Uncountable

♥Have Got

♥Present Simple

ELLLO : Practise.Listening.Comprehension

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Are you looking for a site to do some Listening Practice? Then, you have just found it!

ELLLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online and it’s an amazing site with tons of listening activities to help you improve your listening skills with audio, video, quizzes and vocabulary.  It is created by Todd Beuckens, an English teacher based in Japan.

The activities contain the tapescript and some  comprehension questions, vocabulary quizzes and  also images to help you understand.

Choose your level (beginner to advanced) and then choose the activity.

♥Interviews: natural conversations with various speakers of English that offer multiple listening options

 ♥ Listening Games: where students listen to audio about a topic and choose the picture that matches the audio.

♥Mixer: a survey that features six different speakers answering the same question. Students can easily follow the topic and compare the various responses. Each speaker’s segment comes with two questions that appear at the end of the audio segment to develop test taking skills.

♥News Center: an animated newscast. Each newscast has six stories. For each story, students can try to answer questions about                                                    each news story.

ELLLO is certainly worth a visit!

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Video Lessons: TedEd-Lessons Worth Sharing

Audio, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Listening, , ,

I’ve known about TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) for quite a long time but although I found their videos very interesting I thought they were too long or too difficult for my classes. Now TED has launched a  new  site, called TedEd,  with  a collection of educational video lessons you can choose by subject and view in class or assign as homework. Every video is accompanied by a lesson with Quick Multiple Choice questions that check your general comprehension. If you have one wrong, you can always check with the video hint and you can also have Think questions that further explore the topic.

For teachers , one of the most powerful features is the FLIP THE LESSON where you can customize the lesson by editing the title, giving your own instructions, select  or deselect any multiple choice questions…etc.

This is a lesson I have flipped for my students. I used the video Questions No One Knows the Answer To to give my students some practice using Reported Speech Questions. You can see my lessonhere