While I do not like lecturing at the students anyways, I especially do not like teaching at them about punctuation and grammar.
First semester, I decided to try a flipped classroom. The traditional flipped classroom - a bit of an oxymoron - usually entails the students reading or watching the material at night, and then homework being finished during class through activities and discussion with other students and the teacher.
I used the flipped classroom idea to move through the first three chapters of our grammar book, which should be covered during 9th-grade English. Our book became a bit tedious and time-consuming, especially when we had to spend so much class time covering the chapters. I would prefer to use class time for more reading, writing, and collaboration in partners and groups.
For each video, I would give students a worksheet to take home. During the video, students would take notes and complete a few questions as they moved along to make sure they were understanding the material. All of my students had some way of watching the videos, whether it be through their phones or school/home computers.
When they came to class the next day, I would give students completion points if they completed the worksheet, then allow them to use their worksheet on a short quiz or activity over the topic of the previous night's video. Students quickly realized that even if they missed a few points on the quiz or activity, the completion points would make up for those and made the assignment worth doing.
Throughout the videos, I would put in pictures of different teachers and students as examples, along with references to athletes or pop-culture. Videos also included short games as brain breaks.
I did not want to simply lecture at the students through the videos; they needed some reasons to stay engaged and continue watching.
The first video, my test run, discussed parts of speech. My examples included a favorite teacher at Vianney, a student who loves John Wall, and a student who enjoys volleyball; I also threw in some cartoons about pronouns. While a clip of Ron Burgundy and School of Rock did not work as well as I hoped, the students responded very well to the video. I decided to teach the second two chapters of the grammar book through the YouTube videos also.
First semester, I decided to try a flipped classroom. The traditional flipped classroom - a bit of an oxymoron - usually entails the students reading or watching the material at night, and then homework being finished during class through activities and discussion with other students and the teacher.
I used the flipped classroom idea to move through the first three chapters of our grammar book, which should be covered during 9th-grade English. Our book became a bit tedious and time-consuming, especially when we had to spend so much class time covering the chapters. I would prefer to use class time for more reading, writing, and collaboration in partners and groups.
For each video, I would give students a worksheet to take home. During the video, students would take notes and complete a few questions as they moved along to make sure they were understanding the material. All of my students had some way of watching the videos, whether it be through their phones or school/home computers.
When they came to class the next day, I would give students completion points if they completed the worksheet, then allow them to use their worksheet on a short quiz or activity over the topic of the previous night's video. Students quickly realized that even if they missed a few points on the quiz or activity, the completion points would make up for those and made the assignment worth doing.
Throughout the videos, I would put in pictures of different teachers and students as examples, along with references to athletes or pop-culture. Videos also included short games as brain breaks.
I did not want to simply lecture at the students through the videos; they needed some reasons to stay engaged and continue watching.
The first video, my test run, discussed parts of speech. My examples included a favorite teacher at Vianney, a student who loves John Wall, and a student who enjoys volleyball; I also threw in some cartoons about pronouns. While a clip of Ron Burgundy and School of Rock did not work as well as I hoped, the students responded very well to the video. I decided to teach the second two chapters of the grammar book through the YouTube videos also.
The second video addressed parts of a sentence. Again, I threw in cartoons and examples using teachers, and students and their interests, but I also added a game and "practice" time to do a few questions on the worksheets. After every practice section, I placed a game called "What Noise Do I Make?" during which I would flash a picture of an object or person and instructed the students to make the noise aloud to try and scare their parents or make someone around them laugh. Examples of the game take place at minutes 1:20, 2:40, 5:04, and 7:41.
Although this seems trivial and goofy, they responded that the practice breaks and games helped them get through the grammar parts of the video and also made them laugh.
Although this seems trivial and goofy, they responded that the practice breaks and games helped them get through the grammar parts of the video and also made them laugh.
Finally, the third video introduced phrases and verbals. After having good feedback about the practice time and game, I introduced a new game into this video. This game asked students "What am I?" and showed an illusion. I instructed the students to name or read the objects aloud. Examples take place at minutes 2:00, 4:15, 6:03, 7:50, and their personal favorite: 10:05.
While teaching grammar through YouTube required more prep time for me, the response from the students reminded me that the time spent was worth the engagement and the new-found extra time in class for other activities that we enjoy.
These are our stories!
These are our stories!