Take Students to All Corners of the Earth Via Video Field Trips:)

Though the use of videos scaffolds any assignment/lesson, their use is instrumental in delivering comprehensible content information to English language learners in mainstream classes.  The visuals provide access to new vocabulary as well as build student knowledge of the academic language needed to be able to summarize orally, write a reflective piece on what they learned, share insights with peers in the class, etc. Such video supports need not be long--3-6 minutes should be all that is needed.  Further, if students have access to computers and internet at home (or smart phones), they can review the videos as many times as needed.  In many of the videos, student often can also access closed captioning. Since even advanced ELLs might not catch every word, they will welcome this tool to fully follow the stories.

The internet offers many resources here.  This post only includes 2 popular ones.  The first one, CBS NEWS ,  takes students around the world by following prominent news stories.  Each story has the closed captioning option.  News features here cover material for science, current events, sports, geography, mathematics, politics, government, etc.

This second site is one where students and teachers produce videos and post them here.  Though no closed captioning is available, the films are very visual and the language not too difficult to follow.  The one on visiting New York City is quite impressive for students so young:)  MEET ME AT THE CORNER

Include lots of visual stimuli in class lessons and see student involvement grow:)

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

PBS PROJECT BASED LEARNING Video Library for Most Grade Levels (Perfect Support for Common Core)

The video library in this site is an excellent resource on project based learning initiatives around the United States.  Their projects cover all 3 grade spans:  elementary, middle, and high school.  Closed captioning allows full access to content and dialogue.  When opening a link, click on QT since that is the only one which allows full screen access.  The FLASH one does not.

Project based learning is the ideal tool to building connections between content and the real world.  Imagine the delight in eyes of students as they discover through the learning process how math, science, and language (for example) are interrelated!  For ELLs especially, this will break down the barriers of content language which sometimes muddies the waters when it comes to tackling grade level content course materials.  Now, small teams of students will combine all the skills and content knowledge of the group to explore projects in engineering, aerospace, 21st century energy, education in the next 50 years, etc.  ELLs will not only develop a deeper understanding of the content, but also sharpen their English skills.  Actually, it is truly an exciting time to be both a teacher and a student. 

Hopefully these short videos will inspire teachers new to project based learning to give it a go:)

PBS FREE VIDEO LIBRARY

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

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