Monday, September 24, 2018

My First Animated Video! Spanish 1A Lesson 8 - El muchacho que juega a los videojuegos


Guess what I spent all day yesterday doing? Yeah, um...teaching myself how to make animated videos. Here's my first attempt, which took me about 5 hours.

Why?

I'm desperately seeking new ways to present comprehensible input in huge, rowdy, loud classes of Spanish 1. Specifically, ways I can do less work in class while my students do more (learning-centered) work. I need to conserve my energy and my voice, both of which by the end of some days have taken quite a beating. Also, I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed more and more over the past 8 years or so that sometimes it's just hard to get students to focus on a skit. It's hard to corral your actors; it's hard to get the "audience" to pay attention. The generation we have now is so media-oriented that if it's not on a screen, they just can't seem to focus on it. (Am I the only one having this issue???)

Also they have the attention span of a flea, so I'm thinking a 3-minute video is about right.

And if you know me, you know that I am ALWAYS looking for ways to make this job easier. If I can spend 5 hours on Sunday making animated videos and then relax in class, I'll do it.

I also made this video to introduce the vocab for this story:




And this video quiz/worksheet that I'm selling on Teachers Pay Teachers to go with these two videos. It has 33 total questions, 18 of which are about the animated story. My plan is to show the vocab video first while they write down (or type) the English on their Spanish vocab lists, then show the animated story video once, then pass out the video quiz, maybe have them write down whatever answers they can remember, then show the animated story a second time while they check/fill in their answers. Then they can answer the 15 "Preguntas personales" (PQA-style) at the end, and then we can go over that. (Will update later with my results!)

If all goes well, my plan is to do two animated videos per week plus video quizzes and upload everything as I go. You can follow me on YouTube and/or Teachers Pay Teachers if you want to teach Spanish 1 along with me and enjoy the crazy ride. :-)

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