As everyone seems to be busy completing various challenges (see Jason's Wandrous Whiteboard and Karenne's Dogme Challenges ) I thought I would come up with my own!
One of my classes is a group of ten year olds who have been in our school for approximately two years.
Over the past couple of lessons we have been looking at different sports and their characteristics as well as how to express likes and dislikes. They wrote about their favourite sports, but I wanted them to practise speaking too, so I asked them if they would like to appear in a video that other children in different countries could see. This particular group are quite outgoing and very enthusiastic, and they love doing drama activities and projects to supplement the course book.
I wrote some prompts on the board to help them remember what kind of things they could say, such as:
I like... I don't like ... Most popular sport etc. They practised their speeches without the camera first, and most of them needed a couple of tries with the webcam recording as they got nervous and started laughing.
Here is the merged video:
They really enjoyed seeing themselves speak in English and I have suggested they try it at home too, so they can listen to their pronunciation.
What I would like to suggest is for those of you who teach young learners to do something similar. All you need is a computer or laptop with a webcam. I used the basic software that came with the webcam and then merged the videos online with a free application which does not allow editing or downloading but offers the HTML code for you to embed the video into your blog, and a link you can email to students, as well as being able to upload to youtube if you wish.
My students would love to see other children talking about their favourite sports. If you do decide to record your students, send me a link to the video and I will show it to my class. This could be a great collaborative project!
