Lynn Gallacher, British Council

Topic: Animated stories

Aims
Global understanding of video
Presentation of language
To give learners an opportunity to use language from video in a creative context

Age: 5 - 10 year olds

Level: Elementary

Introduction
There are lots of animated videos for native speakers of English. Many will have an educational aspect as well as providing entertainment and will often aim to 'teach' children something. Common topics are; family, school, friends etc. These can be easily adapted for teaching language to non-native speakers.

Materials
Video - any animated story video: Spot, Spider, (I used the Eric Carle story The Very Hungry Caterpillar
5/6 Flashcards of story illustrating main points

Procedure

• Pre-viewing
• Tell learners they're going to watch a story.
• Show flashcards, invite children to use existing vocabulary to describe them.
• Put them on board mixed up. Ask learners to predict the order and put them on board in that order. (There are no wrong answers at this stage.)
• While-viewing
• First viewing: Global understanding - Learners watch video and after it's finished check order of flashcards on board. Change if necessary.
• Second viewing: Presentation of language - Identify a language point (probably vocabulary) from the story. Teacher stops video at relevant point and asks questions OR Tells learners to listen for words connected to topic and say STOP when they hear one.
• Post-viewing
• Learners make a story book based on video
• Learners act out the story
• Craft work -make something connected to story - picture, puppet etc.
• Learners do further work on language point presented.

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