Starting with a YouTube video on any topic interesting to the kids has been the subject of Jim’s teaching this past week. It is a significant idea from Nathan. I will start this thread below with some comments by Jim. We can categorize this idea as “YouTube CI”.
Jim:
If I may give an example of what I did the other day in my first “story” with Spanish 2. It was incredibly easy, not that long, and I didn’t have to put all the pressure on myself because there was a video to cap it all off and kind of justify the story so to speak. I saw an article on yahoonews with this video embedded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=flCtd10i6iA
I picked a couple structures to focus on (soccer game, was sitting, tried to catch), the first two being familiar and the last one being completely new. Then I asked who went to a soccer game this summer. Two kids raised their hands. I picked one and brought him up, and we started talking about when he went, where it was at (I chose that detail based on the actual event), and started the action with him acting. It took at least an hour and a half total, with brain breaks during, and follow up with re-tells and a reading of it the next day. I would attach the reading, but I wrote it on the whiteboard. It was only 6 sentences long. This idea (credit Nathan?) of finding interesting news stories, and inserting students into the real story (as themselves or acting as the real character), is an idea I like very much for upper levels. Reality can be bizarre. And it kind of picks the structures for us. Here is another one:
For IF/THEN practice, this one would be money! “If you won the lottery, would you stop eating McDonald’s?”
And maybe that would bring you to this interesting news story:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonalds-opening-first-ever-vegetarian-134839878.html
Lots of fodder for good conversation.
And for all you CO folks out there…