[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the vocabulary activities.

As regards the vocabulary activities, I think my students would like n° 1: noticing who is the character saying that word or expression. I think in the case of longer expressions it might be structured also as a pre-viewing activity where we introduce characters and students might guess. Then, as they watch the movie they confirm or verify their guessing.

Great idea. I can see this adaptation working well as a pre-viewing task.

I thinks they might also like the activity n°3: listening for words/expressions to match the definitions. I think that this is similar to finding collocations, as far as there is a sort of completing exercise that they might like.

Yes. Listening for words/expressions to match the definitions works well with teenagers.

I would also like to experiment the Venn diagram: I think this would be very useful when practicing or reinforcing vocabulary (adjectives) to describe people’s aspect or personality.

Yes. This one works very well for describing a character’s personality and physical aspect.

I’ve never used any other activities with short films and videos to teach vocabulary, but I’ll do more of it in the coming school year.

I’m sure they’ll work well with your students.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the short film to foster empathy.

What is it about the short films and videos showcased in the text which makes them good for fostering empathy? Think about camera shots, colour, music, and dialogue.

In my opinion, the first aspect that makes these short films good for fostering empathy is their theme. If poverty or illiteracy may be problems that my students are not so close to, camera shots, very gradual development of the actions, music crescendos help the viewers enter the story slowly and understand the meaning of it while imagining how it feels to be in that situation. On the other hand, themes like disability, bullying and homophobia are themes that are very close to our students’ experience, either directly or indirectly, and as you pointed out they are shamefully neglected themes.
THey’re important aspects of our lives and textbooks are so ordinary that they’ve ended up being unrealistic. That’s probably one of the reasons why school language is sometimes too far from teenagers’ language and lifestyle.

Excellent point. The themes of these films and videos often strike a cord with students. the fact that these themes are usually ignored in the classroom, means that when we use films related to these themes, the impact is even greater.

The focus given by specific camera shots, the music and colours (for example in “The Alphabet of Illiteracy”) are all used as devices that can let the viewers “enter” into and feel the story.

Yes. The camera shots, the music and colours are all used effectively to grab our attention and make us empathise.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the short films and videos.

Did you enjoy the films and videos? – Yes, I did!

I’m delighted you enjoyed the films and videos!

Probably the one I found less “enjoyable” and probably would work less with my students is “Wisdom”. But not because the theme is not interesting, just because I think the dialogues are a bit more difficult to follow, there are no scripts or subtitles, so I see this short film as more suitable for adult learners at a higher level maybe.

Yes. It’s only really suitable for high levels.

Are the values presented in the films and videos important in the culture of your teaching context?
– Yes, those values are really important but at the same time they have been quite neglected so far in high schools especially.

Yes. Mainly of these values do seem to have been neglected for a number of decades.

Some of these short films would be good also as lessons in “Educazione Civica”, that is to say a subject we may call “civic literacy”: it has been re-introduced in Italy in 2020, as a compulsory subject to be taught by all teachers of different subjects. We must teach at least one hour Educazione Civica in each class per week, for a total of 33 hours a year and we must deal with themes that range from law and constitution, civil rights, solidarity, ecology, environment, etc. These videos could provide perfect material for an English lesson of “Educazione Civica”. Especially “Kindness” and “Saving Grace”.

I really like the concept of ‘civic literacy’. I’d never heard the phrase before but I like it! I think it’s really interesting that the Italian government has taken this step. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops in schools.

Are there any short films related to values that have worked well with your students?

I want to say here that my favourite one was definitely “Saving Grace”: the music is top! It’s appealing and involving; the scripts are numerous and really helpful to follow the meaning and they make the cognitive-linguistic load much lighter. I think this would work just perfect with my students. It would be a nice way to start a solidarity event, let’s say before Christmas, leading the students to know more about Mary’s Meals and to donate money to this charity. I think students really appreciate when they feel they can do something, to make a difference. This video inspired me in this direction.

I’m delighted you like this one so much. i think the video shows how effective solidarity campaigns can be.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Angie,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the Black Button.

Black Button

A good choice.

Pre-viewing
Intriguing title, speculate
Pic of characters, speculate

Both of these pre-viewing speculation activities would work well with this film.

While-viewing
Stop and go viewing, speculate where they are, why

Pausing and getting students to predict/speculate works well with this film.

Post-viewing
Discussion questions on morals, afterlife

Two excellent discussion topics for this film.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Angie.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Angie,

Thanks very much for your great lesson overview.

Black Button

This is a good choice.

level B1+, B2, C1 (depending on tasks)

Yes. I agree that this one is probably B1+ and above.

student type teenager, young adult, adult, older adult

Yes. This one isn’t suitable for younger learners.

language vocab not too difficult, only two speakers, one mumbles a bit

Yes. The language isn’t too difficult and there are only two speakers. There is some mumbling, as you point out.

length 6:55min a wee bit over the 5min mark

7 minutes is still fine as there isn’t too much language.

relevance and interest questions of morality and the afterlife are of general interest
task potential

Morality is a good focus. The afterlife is an interesting one.

Give title, have them speculate

The intriguing title here is excellent for speculation and prediction.

Show pic of two characters, have them speculate

The two screenshots for speculation and prediction would work very well here.

Stop and go viewing, speculate what’s going on/how he will decide

This film definitely lends itself to pausing and predicting/speculating.

Discuss morals/afterlife

Two good discussion topics.

Risky: Play Cards against Humanity

I’d never heard of ‘Play Cards against Humanity’ before but I’ve just checked it out. Really interesting concept! It would work really well with this film!

Thanks again for your great lesson overview, Angie.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the short films as narratives.

My favorite ones were “intriguing title”; “empathizing with the character”. The first one because it stimulates creativity and probably will be a chance to show the students that they can write many things in English when given a stimulating prompt. I think they do not like writing a lot (I didn’t like writing tasks as a student myself) because the tasks we normally give are not so intriguing!

The “intriguing title” activity is one of my favourites and, depending on the title, can work really well. I think it’s a more creative and engaging wriitng prompt than more traditional prompts.

The second one struck me especially in the letter-writing activity: I think it is an original way to help students explore and express their feelings ant also understanding other people’s feelings imagining what they would do in their shoes.

This is another of my favourites. Putting yourself into the shoes of anothe rperson is an engaging and motivating writing prompt.

2) Which of the activities could you use with your students?

I think that the “intriguing title” and the “stills story” are very adaptable and useful to be done at school.

Both of these are easy to implement.

3) Have you used short films and videos as writing prompts before? Did your students enjoy them? Have you used any other writing activities inspired by short films or videos?
I must admit that I have never used short films as writing prompts so all this is new to me!

I hope you’ll be able to use some of these with your students. I think you’ll be happy with the results!

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the silent short film activities.

The activities were so many and varied, I think they all have wonderful potential to be used with our students, depending on the skills we want to reinforce, also. There is a lot of input for writing to be done at school or as a homework and this is great.

I’m delighted you liked the variety of the activities.

1)Which activities did you like the most? Why?

I liked the description of the “Memory Game”, because it makes me predict that students are probably going to take as a funny challenge, trying to remember as many details as possible.
“Moving Music” is also one of my favourites as long as it will help teachers and students to find a way to learn how to express emotions and describe them. This is one of the key-competences they should acquire but it is not usually so easy to practice it in our ordinary lessons.
“What happens next” is also an appealing activity, because I think it gives the possibility to exercise with imagination, creativity and writing a story. Many original results and predictions may come from the students and I think this will be stimulating.

These three activities work well and generate a lot of language.

2) Could you use any of these activities with your students?

I think they are all very easy to use in my school with little tools required: the IWB is enough as an equipment to play the films.

Absolutely. They’re all really easy to implement.

3) Have you already used silent short films with your students? What was your experience like?

Very rarely, but both the students and I enjoyed the activity with the short film: I did the same in different classes and the outcome tended to be always different: this is something important also from a professional point of view: we as teachers can never get bored with this kind of lesson.

Yes. Getting different outcomes can be motivating for the teacher.

4) Are there any other activities you’ve used with silent short films that have worked well?
I had used your activity based on “The Conditioned”, which was based on the use of pictures taken from the short film, and it was a good experience for me and the students enjoyed it! Many of them were really surprised and struck by the story.

‘The Conditioned’ image activity is really nice and gets students speculating.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the short film activities.

1) short film viewing guide: very helpful and well-structured according to the three phases of pre-viewing, while-viewing, and post-viewing. The while viewing is very important and useful for me, as I usually struggle to create activities that can help the students stay focused on the film they’re watching. It’s a good worksheet also because it’s adaptable: we may select some questions of the after-viewing phase that are especially suitable according to our students and our classes

Yes. This is a very robust but flexible framework for working with shorts.

2) Video ads activity sheet: I find this helpful, very very flexible so there is space for adaptation, but also very interesting as ads may have an endless number of details and second meanings and nuances that our students may analyse and discover. I really liked this one, and I can’t wait to experiment it…

I’m very happy you like this one. Again it’s a robust framework but flexible at the same time.

4) Sound grid activity sheet: This is extremely convenient, very quick and easy to prepare for us teachers. It leaves room for letting the students free to observe any detail: we could play a group game where the winner is the group who collected more details, or more adjectives to describe the four elements. I mean, there is space for creativity and a little bit of improvising may be. Taking notes is also an ability that my students need to acquire so, why not?

I like your idea of adding an element of competition.

5) Sound activity sheet: I am curious to try and see the difference (or not) between the students’ predictions and their reaction when watching the short film with both sound and picture. I think this is really engaging for the students, they’ll get involved and I find this worksheet enjoyable.

This one works very well. Students often make brilliant predictions.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the benefits of using short films.

I definitely agree with the benefits underlined and I must admit that I had never thought that short films could have all these pros.

I’m happy you’ve discovered some new benefits of using shorts in the classroom.

I may add, from my perspective as a teacher working in class with students with very different levels, sometimes with specific learning disorders, that short films could be particularly effective and give a sense of completeness both to the teacher and to the students, especially when dealing with disorders that imply difficulty in keeping the attention high for a long time. This is the case for more and more teenagers nowadays even when there isn’t any specific disorder: keeping their attention high is not an easy task so short movies could be just perfect. The sense of achievement and of completeness is important, I think students need to say at the end of the day “Today we did this” rather than today “we started” to see this….

This is a great point. Short films could definitely be beneficial for the types of students you mention.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your in-depth evaluation of the viewing framework.

Hi everyone! I am back and trying to catch up on everything I left behind….

Great to have you back!

I think that an Extensive Viewing Programme at my institution, which is a public school where lessons start at 8:30 and finish at maximum 2:30 pm, could be best introduced through an experimental project to be done in the afternoons.

This makes perfect sense.

What would the benefits of the programme be? – This would be an enrichment for what we call “offerta formativa” of our school, that is this would add a new way of learning foreign language (English) in an innovative way. Also, this would allow students to reinforce their skills with English and spend more time at school doing something enjoyable and at the same time educational.

I like the way you’ve expressed the benefits here.

How would students benefit? – The students could play an active role in such a programme, as the final work for examples requires them to provide a very personal and multi-modal response to the film. Discussion questions would provide the students with an occasion to confront and compare their perspectives and their beliefs on some specific themes, or social problems, with their mates. This would enrich their critical thinking abilities, their debating abilities and open their minds, of course while practising English.

How would teachers benefit? – Teachers would benefit from a more authentic and original kind of teaching activity, I think this kind of teaching would be much more rewarding than simply teaching grammar structures or reading and translating dialogues and making efforts on trying to involve their students.

I completely agree that this type of active learning would be much more beneficial than simply teaching grammar structures or reading and translating dialogues.

Moreover, this project could be done through a CLIL project, for example we could involve the History colleague and watch movies set in a specific historical time, so that both disciplines could be involved. In my school, where audio and visual techniques are the core subjects of the course I teach in, I could involve in the project my colleague of “Laboratory tecnici”: this is a subject where students learn to make and edit photo and video materials: that would be perfect.

Great point. This framework would definitely work in a CLIL project.

How would the institution benefit? – The Institution could boast the experimentation of an innovative method of teaching and also a new strategy to stop (or at least try) school abandoning, which is a really serious issue in my territory. My headteacher would be enthusiastic I think, as she is very sensitive to the question of learning English and promoting innovative teaching strategies.

I’m delighted to hear that your headteacher would be receptive to this type of framework.

Can you foresee any obstacles you might have to overcome?
I think this could be done with little money and little resources, probably the difficulty could be given by the fact that many students would have some difficulties in spending time at school in the afternoon: my school is in a small town, but most of the students come from the nearby villages, sometimes from the countryside: there are not many buses in the afternoons to make it easy for them to move freely. This is probably the main obstacle and the difficulty to convince students to spend more time at school in the first attempt. I think if they try it, this would be a very significant socializing experience, and they need it a lot!

These are legitimate concerns. Convincing students to spend more time at school is tricky but it might be possible to convince them and their parents of the benefits of this type of project.

Thanks again for your excellent in-depth evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Gail,

Great! I’ve given you feedback on the lesson overview in the other thread.

Many thanks.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Gail,

Thanks very much for your lesson overview.

How to Become a Better Person: Ten Virtues of the Modern Age
I would choose this for young adult/adult advanced learners of English since there is a lot of high language here (together with visuals) and the subject matter is quite theoretical.

Good choice. It’s appropriate for advanced students but also has rich visual support.

I would also try to capitalize on their life experience.
I would do a lot of work before viewing the film. Have them name 5-10 Virtues of the Modern Age (they may need to see a bit of the film to understand what is meant by virtues). I also would have them name 5-10 vices or curses of the modern age (I think these would come up along the way – while searching for the virtues.)

This is a lovely way to activate the students’ schemata.

Viewing activity: either I would stop along the way and have them think of examples from their lives or I would have them watch half and choose one virtue that they could speak about – and then the other half and choose another. I think it may be too much to watch the film from beginning to end and choose one.

I agree it’s better to break this one up as there’s a lot of language which could lead to cognitive load if played all at once.

Post-viewing: Tell a story that exemplifies either a virtue or a vice. (this could also be done in groups.) This could be either a speaking or a writing prompt. It could also be the basis of a film they could make.

This is a great activity to personalise the language.

Thanks again for your lesson overview, Gail.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Gail,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the framework.

A

ha, here is a great framework for digital storytelling or movie making. Deceptively simple. Fine for students who have experience. Daunting and extremely time consuming for others. I am speaking from personal experience, but I had to learn everything from scratch, whereas some of the students did this kind of thing in high school or have experience on YouTube, social media, etc.

These are all great points. This framework and other similar frameworks are easy for more experienced teachers and students but the novice has to learn from scratch and this is obviously more challenging but, at the same time, more rewarding.

It is not too difficult to make the movie itself, including the storyboard and the narration. Finding music and adding it is more difficult and time consuming. This step can be skipped by inexperienced students.

Good point about finding and adding music which should be copyright free.

Again, I have found that university students don’t necessarily have the time for a project like this. It is fun and worthwhile, and it is definitely a learning experience.

Great point about time. Film-making is very time consuming but as you point out it’s also fun, worthwhile and an excellent collaborative learning experience.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Gail.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Gail,

Thanks very much for your great comments.

I would prefer the 5 second or 1 minute over the 1 second. I found the one second hard to retain.

Good point. Some teachers and students find the 1-second films too short and can’t get into them while others love them.

The “how to” and dialogue are ones I’ve tried and they are fine.

‘How to’ videos are a great introduction to video making and really engaging and motivating for students.

BTW I took an online course on digital storytelling at U of Texas – very worthwhile and you can learn a lot about digital tools for making films. Storytelling is good for language learners. It could be added to this topic.

The storytelling course sounds great. I did a similar digital storytelling course at FutureLearn which was developed in collaboration with the University of Birmingham: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/digital-storytelling

Thanks again for your great comments, Gail.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Gail,

Thanks very much for your comments.

I think you could add “How to” videos – especially in the realm of cooking or arts and crafts. I have used these in conjunction with recipes or directions – especially to teach the relevant vocabulary (food related, for example), or imperative forms or time words and sentences.

Yes. ‘how-to’ videos are brilliant in the language classroom. I think the reason I didn’t include them in this Topic is that I included them in a ‘Student-generated Film and Video’ Topic.

here are also a tremendous number of exercise videos on YouTube – and these are also good for body parts, verbs describing movement, imperatives and the like.

Yes. There is such a variety of ‘how-to’ videos. As you point out, the language used for them is great for body parts, verbs describing movement and imperatives.

Thanks again for your comments.

All the best,

Kieran

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