Archive for video lessons

“The Burgundy Loaf” video and discussion (restaurants)

October 27, 2009 · Filed under general, video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Want to spice up a dull food-and/or-restaurant-related unit with your Intermediate/Upper-Intermediate students?  Or you want to set up a unit related to language for making complaints?  Or perhaps you just want to give your tourist-industry class a quick laugh and have a little discussion.

If any of the above are true in your case, then I heartily welcome you to the Burgundy Loaf:

And the “Burgundy Loaf” video and restaurant discussion lesson, courtesy of $4MT. It’s a short little number that won’t fill an entire class period but could be useful in a variety of contexts.  Bon appetit!

Level: Intermediate/Upper-Intermediate

Materials:

“The Burgundy Loaf” video (above)

“The Burgundy Loaf” task sheet

“The Burgundy Loaf” script with gapfill (optional)

STAGE ONE * Warm-up/Discussion (5 min)

1.  Give Ss the questions either on the handout or on the board/OHP.  Have them discussion the ?s in 1 in pairs.  Do a bit of feedback with the whole class, putting up vocabulary or important words on the board as necessary, then put them in groups of four to discuss the five most important things (question 2).  Discuss a bit as a whole group before moving on to the video.

STAGE TWO * Video (15 min.)

1. Focus on part 2 of the worksheet.  Ss mark each sentence C for Customer or E for Employee, then compare with a partner.

2. Play the video and have Ss listen and check their answers in Part Two of the worksheet.  Discuss as a whole class the questions at the end of part two.

3. (optional) If you want to give your students some more intensive listening practice, give them the gapfill exercise with the transcript of the scene.  Play the video once more, as Ss listen and try to fill the gaps.

(Answers: classy, fantastic, fancy, distinction, atmosphere, shit, courtest, relax, toilet paper, gentleman, everywhere)

STAGE THREE * DISCUSSION

1. Ss ask each other the questions in part three, switching partners when they finish.

Alternatively, you could substitute this last stage for some sort of restaurant roleplay or something like that.  (Or you could do the roleplay in addition to the discussion.)

At esl-lounge there’s an example of one under the heading “At a Restaurant”.  And there’s another one at ESLgo.com, though it has more to do with a job-interview situation than a pure “restaurant” situation.  Then again, there are millions out there.

And for homework, the students could write a letter to Better Business Bureau or Chamber of Commercepretending to be the man or woman in the video, complaining about the service at “The Burgundy Loaf”.  They should describe what happened and ask for some kind of compensation.

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The Lonely Island “We Like Sportz” Sports vocabulary song

June 19, 2009 · Filed under listening, songs, video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

I’m back!  What?! What y’all know about that? What?! What?!

Oh, ahem.  Hi, hello there.  I’ve not been doing much posting as of late.  To make up for that, I’m gonna try to double up here.

As things wind down to a close and the kids finish their schoolwork and take their exams, we’re left in a bit of a lull until the actual end of the course.  And of course, the people want songs.  Songs, songs, songs.

So here’s one.  It’s related to sports and sports vocabulary.  It’s “We Like Sportz” by the Lonely Planet, from their album Incredibad. It’s kind of hilarious.  Could be appropriate for that unit related to sports in your typical pre-intermediate/intermediate level.  The “cheating sux!” line goes perfectly with Unit 1C from New English File Intermediate, for example.

It starts with a little vocabulary word-map / brainstorming activity.  Then there’s a listen-and-tick-the-things-you-hear joint.  Then you got a little correct-the-rhyme-scheme, then-listen-and-check joint.  Then a little fill-in-the-blank action.  Then some discussion activity type flavor–do a “Why? Why? Why?” game in pairs, then talk about it together as a group.

We Like Sportz (MS Word doc, 36 KB)

And here’s the video:

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“Do you have anything to declare?” Customs Roleplay lesson

April 3, 2009 · Filed under video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , ,

As usual, this lesson is not recommended for uptight or super-”by-the-book” type classes and cultural situations.  Highly appropriate for most Western, university-aged students.  (Although a lot of EU residents may be unfamiliar with what exactly “customs” is.)

“Do You Have Anything to Declare?” Travel English / Customs Roleplay Lesson Plan

level: intermediate / upper-intermediate

aims: practice “travel english” and customs situation; noun and verbs forms

materials:

Mr. Show “Shampoo” video

do-you-have-anything-to-declare (MS Word document, 38 KB) Read the rest of this entry »

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Beyoncé “If I Were a Boy” 2nd conditional song

January 22, 2009 · Filed under songs, video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

level: intermediate

aims: practice listening for detail, practice speaking, writing using 2nd conditional forms

Materials:

or

(The Lesson Plan appears below.)

Those of us lucky enough to have students who fall into the demographic category now referred to as “tween” are always up for some song action in class. The students–out of either genuine interest or simply the lazy-minded perception that doing activities with songs is less “worky” than normal book work type things–clamor for them almost constantly.

Problem is, in recent years, we’ve been flooded by a lot of crap music.  I mean, straight garbage.  I mean, not to offend, maybe one of you out there reading this likes Black-Eyed Peas (I don’t), but you try finding a language point worth teaching in the lyrics of a song like, say, “My Humps”.  Or “Get Retarded”. And don’t even get me started on that High School Musical shite.  And Camp Rock, well, I’m not even trying to go there.

It is with great pleasure, then, that I present “If I Were a Boy” by Beyoncé, complete with idea for warm-up, two videos to use in class, two listening gap-fills, personalization, and a writing activity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Mr. Show “America Blows Up the Moon” going to/will video lesson

December 21, 2008 · Filed under video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

level: intermediate

aims: present and/or review going to/will distinction for plans/promises, listening practice

Materials:

or

(The lesson plan appears below.)

Well, I have very few classes left before I knock off for the holiday.  That leaves me thinking already about the New Year and that New Year English teaching favorite that is “reviewing future forms”.

Hence, the second installment in my “Mr. Show for English Teaching” series.

We’re looking at going to for personal plans and intentions vs. will for future facts and promises. (I don’t know about other languages, but speakers with Spanish as their L1 tend to confuse these two functions, often using will to talk about their plans for this weekend or to talk about the weather tomorrow, for example.)

Also, I kind of prefer to leave will for offers out of the equation and deal with it separately, as well as present continuous and present simple with future meanings and all that.  If not, I find that having so many variables and explanations can be counterproductive for the purpose of noticing and practicing these specific uses.

Here’s the video.


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“Christmas in Hollis” worksheets

December 9, 2008 · Filed under kids' lessons, songs, video lessons · Tagged , , , ,

It’s that time of year again.  If you teach in a school, or if you do extracurricular private classes with school-age kids you know what I’m talking about–the month of December (here in Spain, ehem, Catalunya, at least) finds us in the midst of a lull, between the trimestral or semestral or whatever exams and the start of Christmas vacations.   And with no real “meat” on the syllabus to feed to our hungry learners, what better way to while away the time than with a variety of holiday themed activities.  Yeah!  Wahoo!

Now, if you’ve googled xmas activities for TEFL or ESL or what-have-you, you’ve no doubt come across the TEFLtastic page of X-mas goodies, which pretty much has the market cornered on holiday ideas.  Really, dude is mad thorough over there.

Nonetheless, I see my opening here, so I’m goin’ in:  Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis”, for a variety of different language points.  Give ‘em the video with the sound off first and have them tell you about it scene by scene, if you like.  Then hit ‘em up with the worksheet of your choice.   (Note that the “definitions” worksheet could easily be incorporated wholesale into one of the others, with just a little cutting, pasting and boldfacing.) Read the rest of this entry »

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“Titanic” past continuous lesson (kids)

December 5, 2008 · Filed under kids' lessons, video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Now that I’ve fully surrendered my soul to the whims of the hoary Mammon of digital technology, I sometimes wonder what exactly I did to prepare classes before I got my computer.

But then I realize that the real change in habits wasn’t a result of buying the computer at all, really. It was the printer that really changed the game. Before buying the printer, I could use the ol’ laptop to search and research and look up all sorts of stuff, but the final step, getting it to the piece of paper to give to my students, required either A) a trip to the nearest locutorio/cybercafe joint (kind of a pain in the ass, actually) or B) meticulously copying out the necessary text by hand.

This series of worksheets and videos is a case in point: on one hand, you have a couple of Youtube videos downloaded and saved on the pen-drive, or to DVD or whatever. Pretty high-tech. Then on the other hand, you have some handmade worksheets written in felt-tip marker on graph paper. Not so high-tech.

Anyhow…this was originally created for some students who were using the Happy Earth 2 book, which has a little story on the Titanic and a brief exercise with past continuous.

Please note that I have never seen the film Titanic. Never have, never will. Personally, I was surprised that some of my kids, who are pretty young were familiar with the film or have seen it. I suppose it was one of the highest grossing films of all time, after all, but still.

After the aforementioned lesson from the book, I felt my kids were ready to do a little more with that ever-so-useful verb tense, hence the following (which, in fact, I will be using today): Read the rest of this entry »

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Mr. Show “Lie Detector” Video lesson

December 2, 2008 · Filed under video lessons · Tagged , , , , , , ,

level: intermediate, upper-intermediate

aims: review present perfect / past simp. (esp. “Have you ever…?”), intensive listening, practice job interview situation.

Materials:

or

(The Lesson Plan appears below.)

Still teaching your adults Present Perfect? Your students still have trouble producing or recognizing certain participle forms and what not?

Or perhaps you’re especially bored with the unit of job interviews, etc. in your textbook and you want to spice it up a bit.

If your students are adults, i.e. if they don’t have parents who would flip out over slightly racy subject matter then this video just might be for you.

Note: Contains references to drug use and child molestation. Obviously not for kids and definitely not recommended for teachers with uptight, by-the-book type students or teaching situations (click on the link below and watch the video to judge if it’s appropriate or not).

I must say that my Spanish adults, for example, ate this one up, they thought it was hilarious. And useful.

Also, I’ve included recommendations for using the video in one-on-one with each stage of the lesson.

See the video here. I would recommend that you go ahead and buy all the Mr. Show DVDs, it’s pretty gosh-darn hilarious stuff (plus, I have more Mr. Show lessons on the way, in case you’re wondering).


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