Animoto in the Classroom

     Today I used a program called Animoto to create a vocabulary slideshow for beginner level ESL students. Prior to using this program I had never heard of it until today. The program itself did not take more than a few minutes to figure out how to use and the final product looked nice considering I used the trial version and the Animoto watermark is still on my video.

     Last week I really enjoyed using TedED to create interactive lessons for more high intermediate - advanced students. In contrast, I think that Animoto would be more useful for beginners and low intermediate students. The short lesson I created involved introducing new vocabulary for the theme of going on a trip that would be helpful for students just starting out as opposed to a student that is geared more towards higher level grammatical concepts.

     With regards to students using this program, I think it would be a good way for them to meet ESL Standard - ESL.E.2-4.2 which states "students will listen, speak, read, and write in English for literary response, enjoyment, and expression." For example at the end of a travel unit, I would instruct my beginner students create a photo and text slideshow using Animoto. The assignment would include 10 sentences about an imaginary trip they are going on. Each slide would include a sentence with at least one new vocabulary word along with an image of the word.

This activity would be used to evaluate their comprehension of the new vocabulary learned during the unit while simultaneously allowing the students to be creative.

Learning the Difference Between Count and Non-Count Nouns with Ted ED

Today I created my first TEDEd lesson and used a YouTube video depicting the differences between count and non-count nouns. The lesson creating process was easy to follow and different take hardly any time at all.

The main language learning object of this lesson is to help students understand what count and non-count nouns are as well as what the differences are between these two main categories.

In order to incorporate this lesson into my classroom and evaluate whether or not my student(s) have understood the concept. I would hand out a worksheet with two columns. One would be labeled "Count Nouns" and the other side would be "Non-Count Nouns" I would then give the students a minute and a half to write down as many nouns as they could think of while putting them in the correct columns. I would then write the same two columns on the board and have a basket full of slips of paper with different nouns written on them. One by one students would take a noun from the basket and write it on the board under the column they think it belongs under.