ANIMATION FOR EDUCATION

Animation is a great classroom activity, allowing teachers and students to explore and develop a more creative curriculum, in literacy, science, citizenship, MFL and many topic areas. Being fun, creative and hands-on learning, animation motivates and engages both teachers and students as they use simple IT practice, and is uniquely suited to all classrooms.

Here are some tips to teach animation in the class:

1 - Think of a simple idea and story that will be easy to film in the classroom, watch examples in our Screening Room. Download our Teachers Animation Toolkit for ideas and tips to achieving great results in the classroom.

2 - Create your models, using simple bold designs, with large features that will be easy to animate and bring to life. Watch this animation with your class.

3 - Plan your story, once more keeping ideas simple and visual. For your first attempt aim for a film that is advert length. Use our free Story Planner downloadable PDF to help get you started. Keep the number of models in a story to a minimum.

4 - To animate the story you will need:
• A computer or laptop.
• Animation software
• A video camera or good quality webcam.

5 - When filming, work at 12 frames per second, keep the moves of the models small, animate one thing at a time, and aim for a film that is advert length.

6 - Encourage students to preview their animation and evaluate their work as they go. Good animation software can do this.

TEACHING ENGLISH

Teaching speaking skills by “Song and Chat”

In this article you will find a few tips to get you started with teaching speaking skills to young learners. The aims are:
• To think about what you say in class and to make your language more accessible to your young learners

Age
The tips below are for your classes with 5-7 year olds although you can use similar principles when teaching older primary age (8-12).


Speaking - Songs and chants
• Using songs and chants in class gives the children a chance to listen and reproduce the language they hear. They are working on the sounds, rhythm and intonation.
• Remember when you speak or sing keep it simple but very importantly, natural so that when they copy what you say they can have a chance of sounding natural.

Speaking - Whole class chorus drills
• If you have a large class makes sure the language they produce is not just confined to stilted whole class repetitions of sentences produced by you. If the class tries to speak at the same time they automatically slow down and the intonation and rhythm are lost. Whole class repetition does of course have its advantages as it allows weaker students to build confidence with speaking without being in the limelight. Do chorus drills as described above but limit them and always move on to letting individuals speak.


Speaking - Real language
• As with listening, make sure they always have a valid reason for speaking. The more realistic the need for communication, the more effective an activity will be. In other words get them to ask their neighbor ‘Do you prefer chocolate or strawberry ice-cream?’ rather than saying; ‘what’s my favorite food?' This last question is just asking the children to guess rather than think. Avoid getting them to repeat sentences such as; ‘What is my name?’ or ‘Is this a book?’ Not only do you know it’s a book, so the interaction isn’t very interesting, unless the book is hidden in a bag and they are having to work out the contents, but also the response is limited to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Closed questions are ok to lead onto something more with low level learners but be aware of not using them too often.


Speaking - Further suggestions
• Vary the types of speaking and listening activities you do. Keep them interested by introducing new approaches to speaking in class. This could mean talking to different people, talking to different numbers of people, speaking as a whole class, half a class or in small groups.
• For different levels in the same class you can ask them to listen for different things. Ask the weaker ones to tell you how many teddy bears there are in the song and the stronger ones to tell you what the teddy bears are doing in the song.
• To make one activity suit all levels ask them to practice saying between five and ten sentences. This way the quick finishers have more to do and the weaker pupils still feel they have achieved the task if they have practiced only a few sentences.

USING FILM AND VIDEO CLIPS TO TEACHING

Introduction

Film and video are very effective ways of both motivating our students and helping them to understand language, but they do need to be used with care and an understanding of some of the dangers and potential involved. Here are some tips to guide you.
• Length: No matter how keen students are on the film or subject matter, they can only cope with so much at once. Avoid overwhelming them. Don’t exceed 5 minutes of film.
• Run through: Try and estimate the time students will take to do each activity and how many times you will need to show the clip again. Run through the whole thing, get your timing right.
• Set context: If your clip comes from a sequence or part of a story, set the scene before starting. Briefly outline plot, characters or situation if necessary. Show the clip with sound off for a few seconds to elicit where the people are, who they might be, what they are talking about etc.
• Have an aim: Why are you using the clip? To look at request forms and practice them? To give students practice in giving a commentary, telling a story? To lead to a discussion on an issue? Give a concrete task for students to complete while viewing so they use the language you want them to use and this helps them concentrate on the clip.
• Anticipate needs: Look closely at the script and clip. How much new vocabulary might need clarification Do some words need previewing before watching? Can some words/expressions be guessed from context? Do facial expressions or gestures/action help you explain language? Mark these points on your script and plan to use them, pause tape, and involve students’ with questions. Make a vocabulary task for completion whilst viewing, if appropriate.


Useful activities
• Predict language
Getting students to predict the language being used can be useful and motivating.
o Give students the script with key items removed e.g. expressions/verbs/key words/questions.
o View with sound off and students use the visual clues to brainstorm the missing items.
o View with sound to check predictions and complete. View again if needed.
• Focus on roles
Getting the students to role-play the movie can be fun and motivating
o Run through once or twice with the whole class to get the gist and understand setting.
o Assign roles to each student (e.g. if 3 characters in the clip, each student is one of them).
o Give each character a script corresponding to their part in the clip and a couple of focus questions for viewing their character. View clip again.
o Put students in groups to practice their roles, using their scripts. Then perform without scripts.
o Students not keen on role play can be directors/prompters with the whole script.

USING PLAYS IN THE LANGUAGE CLASS

Introduction
Using plays or drama in the language classroom can be both enormously rewarding and enjoyable for teachers as well as students. Here are some suggestions and guidance from Clare on how to get the best from your students.

Using plays with language learners can :
• Improve their reading and speaking skills
• Encourage creativity
• Help them experiment with language -tone of voice, body language and their own lines if they are involved in writing the play.
• Bring them out of themselves -some students like performing or find the script gives them confidence
• Involve the whole class – non speaking parts can be given to learners who do not wish to speak or are less confident. Technical parts of a production can give others a role: sound effects, making scenery, being in charge of lights, props or prompting their classmates from the “wings”.

Plays suitable for language learners
• Short narratives based on very brief scenes of 2-3 lines maximum
• Plays with more than one narrator and plenty of humors through action
• Plays that can be broken up with songs.
• One or two scene playlettes based on stories familiar to the class.

Making your own plays
• Work from a photo, a cartoon or a video clip
• Devise mini plays based on recognisable characters from films the students like
• Take a 10 minute sequence of the film. Tell the background story. Show with sound off. Focus on a couple of exchanges. Imagine what the characters might be saying. Assign roles to pairs and act out. Then allow students to make up their own brief dialogues based on the roles. Bring together their suggestions and work on a class script.

Types of film that are good for this include; Toy Story, Harry Potter, The Borrowers, Matilda or Charlie and the Chocolate factory for Primary up to teens, but it depends on student tastes.

Helping students learn their lines in plays
• Break the script into chunks of learning. Scene by scene or each section of a story.
• Record rehearsals so students can hear themselves and, if you can, video a rehearsal to look at together.
• Make your own recording of it with English-speaking friends to use in preparing the play
• It is great if students can have a copy of this for learning at home.
• Mark the stressed words in the script and check with a recording if you have it. Look at intonation as you deal with each chunk.
• Start learning without a script. If it tells a story work on getting the class familiar with the story. Support the storytelling with visuals if possible (see the posters available with Reader’s Theatre scripts)
• Give students tasks to re order the narrative and move on to reordering dialogue or giving half a scene and asking them to match the missing parts or tell you what might be missing.

Use Reader’s theatre

These are very exciting short plays with 4 to 8 characters but many involve performance parts for everyone in the class. Students work from a script which they read at the front of the class. The script is a story told in parts by many narrators. The stories that are freely available are suitable from Primary up to adult learners. The power of the performance is in the timed reading and contrasting voices. Many performances last no more than 10 minutes and can in some cases be thought provoking, very funny or very sad. Suitable for a class of 22 as well.

Advantages of Reader's theatre
• There's no need for anything but the simplest props, as all characters wear a hat or one item of clothing to represent their character
• The narrative tells a story which is easier for language learners to follow and work on
• Everyone in the class can be involved if different readings are attempted
• Minimal teacher participation is required
• No learning your lines as the performers read aloud from scripts