Category Archives: Videos

Edpuzzle is your best friend

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Edpuzzle has been a tool I have used often since I discovered it a few years ago in one of the Facebook groups I belong to. My students love it and I love how my students get input and interact with it seamlessly. Edpuzzle has worked well as a way to expose my students to other Spanish-speakers, to input that I can incorporate to the video through the questions I ask, and to the many possibilities Youtube or other videos offer.

I have been using the free version and have been leaving some that I am planning to reuse in the future: ones that I modified, and ones that I created myself (old Edpuzzles here). During remote learning, I created a few more and I decided to incorporate a different format in some that I hope you would like to use in your classes.

My version of “Piedra, Papel o Tijeras”

My fourth graders learn about schools, their own, the ones in Spanish-speaking countries, and this one that fit perfectly for them to discuss not only vocabulary in context but bullying.

Marie Curie or my student who will become our next Nobel laureate

We learned about Marie Curie because she was a person one of my students admired deeply and we had to talk about her when we talked about her interests. I love how Edpuzzle allowed me to focus on specific sections to create questions that guided my students into comprehending the information independently and successfully.

Inspiration, soccer, and reading

My students loved learning about Marco Antonio while they watched him play soccer and read what his story was about. There was just a little audio they had to listen to but it was mostly captions they associated to the photos they were seeing. Letting students work at their own pace pausing or rewinding the video proved to be a challenge they enjoyed taking. They felt a great sense of accomplishment that I could notice when they interacted in class about the video.

Food for thought

We teach a language and the possibilities are endless in terms of all we can learn and what we can do. I loved learning how to make Paneer, the favorite dish of one of my students, and he was so surprised he learned the recipe from a native Spanish speaker before he learned it from one of his relatives who were usually the ones who made it for him. Thanks to the pauses and the small sections, my students were able to focus on identifying the key details they needed to answer my questions.

And what if the input is in English?

Well, I believe there are many ways to learn something and especially to learn a language. This trailer is in English but my input is in Spanish. My students needed to focus on scenes or audio to figure out the answers to my questions. They answered the questions in Spanish and discussed them in Spanish, as well. Edpuzzle allowed me to keep the parts of the video that I considered to be the most important ones and discard the rest. What is not to love about Edpuzzle?

If you can see yourself using my creations in your classes, please consider leaving me a comment or following me. I would love to hear/read what you think : )

Asynchronous activities about our “Personas Especiales”

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During our emergency remote teaching trimester, I saw my fifth grade classes once a week and they worked independently on our second class. We used PearDeck to interact in our synchronous lessons about our “Personas Especiales” and the independent activity (asynchronous task) was related to our live discussions and an extension that involved a video students had to respond to.

Here are some videos and activities I assigned that referred to a feature our “Personas Especiales” shared so that my fifth graders could see the vocabulary we were learning in context.

Quiero un perrito

Since one of my students really wanted to have a pet but her family was not really sure about it, I found the perfect video on Youtube.

Activity: Watch the video and aim to write more than 15 cognates you can find. Make sure to set the captions to Spanish. Write the words in Spanish and English.

Música maestro

My students know how to play the recorder and we learned one of our special persons was into playing the flute professionally. Since we had watched the movie Coco before, I thought having them learn to play the melody with a Spanish speaking teacher would be a fun and meaningful way to get some important input. They amazed me with the videos they recorded playing the melody.

A mí me gusta el baloncesto

For that special person that loved basketball, I found this very informative and fun video.

Activity: Watch the video and write the names of the items needed to play basketball, the dimensions of the basketball court, and what makes a basketball team. Make sure you set up the captions to Spanish. Write the items in Spanish and English.

Somos unos grandes artistas

For those of my students who loved art, I wanted them to enjoy admiring paintings of a famous Spanish artist or drawing while they got their comprehensible input through the visuals and the task they needed to solve.

Activity: Take a screenshot of three of your favorite paintings and collect more than five cognates by reading the title of the masterpieces. Write the words in Spanish and English.

This particular student already knew how to draw an anime face and could have her own Youtube channel teaching how to do this but she had not heard another artist explaining the process in Spanish.

Activity: Watch the video and follow the directions to draw the face. Label the parts of the face in Spanish.

Más conexiones

My students were also into some activities that fell into the STEM category.

Although these are very simple calculations, the idea was for my students felt comfortable with the content and could figure out what the instructions were by reading them and seeing how the calculation progressed.

Activity: Watch the video, stop it to read the instructions, and try to figure out what the answers are before they are displayed on the screen. Translate the instructions into English.

Not that my students do not know how to make slime but seeing other kids their age making it and speaking in Spanish was really meaningful and fun.

Activity: Watch the video and write the ingredients for the four ways to make “moco de gorila” in Spanish and English in a piece of paper. Tell me what your favorite way to make slime was.

This student’s favorite animal was the Phoenix and I found a video that related more to STEM and art than to mythology so I thought to add it into this category.

Activity: Watch the video and follow the steps to make “un ave fénix”. Take a picture of your creation and share it with us.

I also included a coloring page in case my students were not happy with their creation. They were better than me.

I hope you find these ideas and activities useful to implement in your classes. My next post will be about the Edpuzzles I created with the same purpose in mind: reach my students through the things they liked so that they felt they were just having fun without realizing they were also learning Spanish.

Stay tune for my next post about my Edpuzzles and one about the stories I created for my students’ Cards. I will also be updating my videos and my stories pages.