Video – teaching through video to teens without technology.
One of the hardest types of lessons I have ever taught is multi-lingual teens groups without sufficent resources available that are targeted towards their age group, plus zero technology in the classroom to allow for other ways of teaching. In the particular instance I am going to write about here, I had a class of 16 teenagers between 14-16 years old and they were from 8 different countries. And just to make it slightly more interesting, my classroom didn’t have a carpet, but bare floorboards which seriously affected the acoustics.
As an adult I feel a 3 hour lesson is hard enough but for teenagers who have come over during their summer holiday to continue studying and are placed in a big class with strangers from all around the world who are all charged with hormones and are miles away from familiarity and comfort, I feel very sympathetic towards these individuals.
For me this lethal cocktail of lack of teaching resources and vulnerable young people meant I needed to move away from focusing on the skills and rapid language development but instead to building a rapport within the class where everyone wanted to be there and felt relaxed and welcomed.
All I can say is that I was terrified! At this point I had taught all ages and many multi-lingual classes but never this particular combination. The course began and what I feared came true, the students were finding it hard to gel. Some seemed very sad and shy, others weren’t being particularly respectful to or thoughtful of others. And all the students hated the coursebook and supplementary materials I was using to get them speaking and chatting. Overall, it wasn’t going well.
At the end of the second week I contemplated giving up and in moments like this it is difficult to remember any successful lesson in my career. After much thought and lots of chatting to friends and family who teach English in secondary schools, I realised stepping away from the typical EFL structure was the only way to get this class to start learning.
I don’t know how the idea came about; it might have been because a friend was talking about teaching MacBeth to her year 11s, but I decided to somehow get the students to devise their own play/film/production.
The book “imaginative projects” offers a lesson in which the students devise their own plot to a murder mystery as well as the characters and then they film it. Using this lesson as the skeleton I got the students talking about famous stories in the world and asking them to explain the plot to their partners. We looked at genres of films and literature and developed new vocabulary along the way. This is when the story of Romeo and Juliet came up. The students seemed to connect with each other as they had all heard the story before and many had watched the film.
I then decided that the students would develop this story and make a short film as a class. There were several stages to the process and I set aside some time every lesson to do an activity in preparation for the filming. (It is important to note that I had looked up the rules on filming young people and as long as I didn’t film or at any point hold the footage I wasn’t breaking any laws. Also, the school has a disclosure on the application form which asks the parents for permission for their children to be filmed whist on premises. Even so, I didn’t want to be in control of the filming.)
The activities included:
1. Devising overall plot (as a class)
2. Developing the characters – personality, appearance etc (in small groups and then as a class)
3. Storyboarding (in 3 groups, each having 1 act, a representative from each group had to regularly go to the other groups to check the storyboards would fit together)
4. Script writing (in 3 groups and then as a class a read through)
5. Role development – students would pick what they wanted to do during the production e.g. Director, camera person, props developer, actor/actress etc. (there were many roles and more than one person if they felt it was necessary)
6. Filming (the students knew they were only going to be filming short clips of the film, as if they were making a trailer) – they used their camera phones or personal cameras to make the film.
Each activity completely surprised me. The students creativity and use of English was astounding. The students had gone from barely speaking during lesson to speaking over each other and using all the new vocabulary we had been learning before each activity. Also, the more dominant students realised that the shy students needed to be heard and so they proceeded to support the quieter students. In addition, as the lessons progress, the group dynamics completely changed. For example, the less respectful students suddenly became very respectful.
For me as a teacher, it was a surreal experience. The students were desperate to learn the language in order to be able to communicate better. When the filming started (which was in the big classroom without any carpet) all the students went to their posts and took responsibility of their tasks. The props department was busy deciding how to make a wig out of cotton wool and how best to organise the props with the script, the actors were busy reading lines to each other and checking their intonation with me, the camera people and directors were busy deciding the angles of the shots and where the actors needed to walk in and out. If someone had walked in to the lesson at that moment, I think they would have just seen chaos and wondered what on earth was going on. But out of the chaos came a film that was full of English. The students were so proud of their achievement (and quite rightly so) and from that week on the students worked together well in all activities and understood the value of learning the grammar and vocabulary in the book.
Even though this is far from a typical EFL lesson, I believe it offers so much to the learners but what exactly? Click on this link to watch a short film that tries to answer this question in 4 minutes.
http://youtu.be/i-heyCyOPFE
References
Wicks, M. (2000) Imaginative Projects. Cambridge University Press.
This is an exceptionally relevant and professionally produced video. It is excellent, and I wish all of the teachers in my institution would watch it and take on board your message. I am a strong advocate of Task-Based Learning (TBL) and I have found it a great way to engage learners and for them to have something they are proud of and have had great fun doing. Language for communicative purpose is a strong method. Projects are really good at promoting Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development to the classroom (outside of the classroom as the case may be) and shows what the learners know and where they need to get to. A socio-cultural perspective using collaboration and shared knowledge really supports their acquisition of meaningful language use. The enjoyment of the experience equates to stronger associations and learning. Technology really does support these kind of projects and we as teachers have fewer excuses not to try these things out (as most learners have a camera and video function on their phone). It is a shame that more ELT institutions don’t support this.
Do you think it would be possible to write a syllabus based on this method?
Your posts are spot-on in terms of engagement but you won’t be surprised if I say I have a concern and that relates to your referencing the literature. I will discuss this in more detail in the tutorial but think about the following. You talk about the book ‘Imaginative Projects’ in the post. This book had a big impact on what you were able to do with a group of learners who you initially found challenging to work with. I want to know more about what you’re reading and how this is informing your approach to selecting, using, and creating materials. Show that you are part of the debate. (And give details of the book “imaginative projects” at the foot of the post.)
Your post illustrates the value of project-based work, and of narrative (story-telling) in education. I have a whole slew of books I can recommend on these areas.
Your video is great. If you’d had time to say more about it in the post (as you did in class) that would be good…
Hello Bea! Thank you for the great session on video. It was a fresh breath of air to the session , totally unexpected and also you’ve demonstrated the great film making skills. Speaking about teaching teens, especially during summer period, I face the same situations where some student struggle and physiologically unwilling to spend their summer holiday, away from their families and friends. It is crucial to build a good rapport with students from very beginning , as in Tomlinson, B(2013), students need a break and it’s where teachers, have to step in and come up with fun activities to simply meet their needs. I find it quite challenging to teach teenagers as they expect from you to be creative, fun, dynamic all the time. I was totally exhausted after 3 weeks of teaching teenagers during Easter break. Making video, it’s great opportunity to make your students work, it tick all this boxes: engaging , communicating in target language, group, pair work, and producing their own material. It’s a great idea for motivation.
Omg that was a great Task-based activity! Loved how you made students learn English and got its essence right. But somehow I’m not able to see the video. It would be good if I can see the video. Can you mail it to me please. Here’s my mail id – maniar.iqra.06@gmail.com