Using Animoto for Your Reading Class

A picture is worth of thousand words.

  You may have heard this line many times. But what if the picture is moving? This shows the power of using video clips for your teaching and learning purposes.

As a language teacher, I would like to use Animoto for my pre-reading activity. Have you seen yourself feeling curious about movies after watching a short movie trailer? My idea is to make a trailer for reading. Look at my work first.

(If you can't see the video clip, press here for YouTube link.

 

I want to use the video clip to check the sequence of story and to encourage students to retell the last part of the story. The video clip was created by based on the text and pictures related to the story with the last part unmentioned. Pictures aid comprehension and recall of texts and students perceive the text more positively when it is presented with relevant pictures (Rathet 1994).

 

Reference
Rathet I. (1994). Engligh by drawing: Making the language lab a center of active learning, TESOL Journal 3 (3) 22-25

 The text I want to use with this video clip I created is here.
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While stuck at traffic lights at a busy Sydney intersection, I watched a very elderly, frail couple crossing the road in front of me. The lady was using a walking frame and, with the help of her male companion, was walking rather laboriously across the crosswalk. The concentration was etched on their faces as they tried to beat the light's change to red. When they reached the adjacent footpath, it appeared that the step was too high up for the lady to lift her walking frame, and her companion was too frail to help. At this point the traffic lights turned to green and I could see the distress on the old couple's face. Very near to me, a young guy jumped out of his pickup truck and halted the traffic. At the same time the driver from a big truck raced across the road and lifted them both to the safety of the footpath. There was not a single sign of impatience from the long line of waiting vehicles. In fact, as the good Samaritans got back into their vehicles there was a very loud chorus of congratulatory honks.