The ELL Teacher's Toolbox (The Teacher's Toolbox Series) by Larry Ferlazzo & Katie Hull Sypnieski

Author:Larry Ferlazzo & Katie Hull Sypnieski [Ferlazzo, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781119364955
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-04-02T16:00:00+00:00

BACK TO THE SCREEN

Back to the screen, also called back‐to‐back by some educators, is a popular video activity in our classroom. We were introduced to it by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess in their book Zero Prep: Ready‐to‐Go Activities for the Language Classroom.

In this activity, the teacher chooses a short clip (movie clips with a lot of action work best) and divides the class into pairs. One group turns their desks so they face the screen and the other students have their backs to it. The teacher starts to show the clip with the sound off and the person who can see the screen describes in English what is happening to their partner. The teacher then pauses the video, students switch places, and the teacher hits play and the roles are reversed. Depending on the length of the clip, this switch can happen three or four times (we usually change every two minutes or so). The pairs then work together to write a chronological sequence of the events in the clip. They can share with another group and then with the class. The activity concludes with the class watching the whole clip with the sound turned on (if extra support is needed, the whole clip can be shown to the class prior to creating the chronological sequence).

We described this activity in our first book The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide (Ferlazzo & Sypnieski, 2012, p. 67) but have since improved it in a few ways. We've found it helpful to scaffold the activity for beginners by writing key words from the clip on the board. If any are new words, we quickly provide the definition or ask students to translate them into their home language. Students can then access these words when they are talking to their partners and writing their chronologies. If we have newcomers in class, we often have them pair up with a more‐proficient student so they can watch the clip and listen to what their partner is saying to the other partner. We've also paired up newcomers who speak the same home language to do the activity in that language.

Then, they can write the chronology in their home language and work to translate it, or parts of it, with assistance from the teacher, a student with higher English proficiency, or Google Translate.

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