“Missing U” – Word Play in a Video Lesson using iSLCollective

Notice this! Naomi’s Photos

Really Important Preliminary Note: 

The following video lesson is meant to be done with soundtrack turned off! Everything relates to the visual input. The video does have a lovely soundtrack but my students are Deaf and hard of hearing, remember?

There’s nothing like taking an in service training course to get one moving out of the comfort zone and trying something new. I’ve been using EDPUZZLE extensively for all my video lessons for quite a while but the course encouraged me to explore new options.  So this video lesson was made using  iSLCollective

iSLCollective is really easy to use! There are varied question types to add and a transcript of the questions is automatically generated below the video. That’s a really helpful feature if you want to choose a ready-made video lesson from the website itself – you don’t have to watch an entire video in order to inspect the questions.  However, there doesn’t seem to be the option of adding two questions to the same stopping point like Edpuzzle has. Both programs allow you to crop the videos and they both have good tech support. They both have a replay option, but in Edpuzzle it is added automatically while in iSLCollective you add it on your own.

Edpuzzle lets you create classes to track your students’ progress, but I don’t use that feature. I embed the videos into the Edmodo we use and do the tracking there. iSLCollective has a very large collection of  lessons to choose from (organized by categories) and when you create a lesson you must fill in information to help categorize your lesson. I actually had trouble with that part, especially as this particular video lesson doesn’t focus on one easily categorized topic such as “prepositions” (I had a video lesson on that a while ago…).

So, what does it focus on?

Naomi’s Photos

This video lesson was planned for struggling learners studying for the Module C matriculation exam, which includes a section on writing an informal letter (these students have accommodations). It is not easy for them and we are practicing writing letters a lot.  The video ties in with letter writing in several ways:

Vocabulary

* Presenting a visual aid to help the students remember that the word “letter” does not only refer to the kind of letter they are writing but to letters in alphabet. These students tend to remember (if at all) only one meaning for words.

* The students tend to see the phrase they use in their letters as one word “I miss you”. This video lesson has repeated use of the word “missing”, not as part as that phrase.

* Exposure to some new vocabulary in a meaningful, visual context. Many of my students do not pick up any vocabulary from their surroundings, (incidental learning) due to their hearing loss. I always try to include some vocabulary that we aren’t currently studying (and may never study!) as exposure. In the case, the words “embark” “journey” and “ukulele” appear in the video.

Thinking Skills – Distinguishing Different Perspectives

These students are required to read a short topic and then write an informal letter from the point of view of that person. For example “David is studying art in Italy for a year. He writes a letter to his parents in Israel about his experiences. Write David’s letter”. Some of these students have hard time writing from another person’s perspective. We discuss this quite a bit. In the video we see how the woman sees the letter “u” missing all around her, while the man is missing the letter “I”. The video gives us an opportunity to repeat the discussion (which the students need) but from a different angle.

Word Play

This video is just a great opportunity for a bit of fun with words! The way the light in the windows form the word “city”, the way the sea looks like the letter “C” and the beehive has the letter “B” plastered over it. There aren’t questions on each pun, but this activity is meant to be done together in class so it can be discussed. It’s nice to have fun!

Enjoy!

 

 

2 thoughts on ““Missing U” – Word Play in a Video Lesson using iSLCollective”

  1. Thank you for introducing another useful tool and usual interesting insights along the way. You’ll find that the problem of remembering only one meaning for words affects not only hard-of-hearing pupils. It’s a topic I’m currently looking into: how a previously learned meaning inhibits learning of other meaning senses of the word. Very interesting…

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