Since elementary-level videos have more “elementary” vocabulary descriptions and cover all content areas, they can be used to teach language and content at the same time. In fact, by using content to teach language, your lessons can be more interesting for all of your students and save you time.

By using the action and images in video programs and clips, your ELL students can at least have an idea about what is being taught. They may not know the English words yet, but they may know or identify the content so they can access their language in their thought processes and begin to translate to English.

Since one of the main designs of K to 5 videos is vocabulary, it is a great resource to use to teach the meaning of words. Students get to see an image or an action or an event, and then hear the words and describing sentences spoken in English. They also get explanations and connections to other ideas through spoken words and images that can help them develop concepts in English that meet the learning objectives of your lessons.

Your ELL students are also learning cultural values and norms at the same time as they are learning English. Video programs can be used to model behaviors. Programs about community rules and laws can show your students behavioral norms in their new country and at the same time learn the words in their new language. Health videos can show students about personal hygiene and hand washing. Science videos can be used to model experiment procedures so when the experiment begins, they have had a visual introduction to the process. What you can’t explain with words you can show with pictures.

Get creative with your assessment. Re-playing video clips can be a great tool. You can use it to check for understanding during your lesson. By using video clips to offer your ELL students multiple choice answers, and even some explanation in their own language, they can have success in learning by giving them a different form to show what they know when they can identify images that they may not have the words for—yet!

Since elementary level videos have more basic vocabulary and cover a wide range of content objectives, educational videos can teach language and content at the same time. The best part is that both your ELL students AND your English-speaking students develop their vocabulary and learn about the world.

Check here for additional information on choosing and using videos in your lessons.

Teachers have a difficult job. They must teach using all the educational resources available in their classrooms, schools, and increasingly from the internet. In these years of economic crisis, accessing educational media via the Internet is becoming more and more popular. Using the internet, videos, software, interactive white boards, and other traditional educational resources at their disposal is part of creating authentic learning environments. By using these tools effectively, teachers engage their students and eager learners remember more and test better. How can you integrate these resources into your everyday classroom? By step-by-step—you can’t learn it all at once—training on new equipment and applications and trying out and implementing techniques that work for you.

For the Teacher

• Take any professional development or product training on new equipment and systems available to you. The extra weekend of classes can make up hours in your lesson development and assessment. Many districts that adopt educational technology systems have free training and consulting through the companies that provided the systems. They also have online tutorials at their website or youtube that may resolve issues you had or may provide lesson ideas.
• Look for internet articles that discuss various ways to use educational media resources (i.e. educational videos, white boards, multi media) for researched-based techniques for improving lessons by using the resources effectively.
• Use online grading programs. This makes doing quarterly grades a snap, and a bonus is many programs allow students and their parents to access their own grades.
• Use the internet to research lessons and educational resources. There are many reliable sites that teachers use to talk about successes (and failures!) of lessons. Remember, many companies are committed to providing appropriate content and grade level media resources, so don’t forget to look at the professional sites.
• Communicate with parents via email or your own class website. Parents have wildly varying schedules, and this may be the best way to communicate with the most people. This also allows you to show what is happening in your classroom efficiently and timely. Most school Instructional Technology departments can help you set up a class website.
• Use programs to detect plagiarism. Use best practices for explaining to your students how to use content ethically and teach them appropriate techniques for documenting content from the internet.

For the Class

• Use school videos to supplement lessons and to engage students in learning. You can use DVDs, VHS or stream video clips online. You can bookmark educational sites and even watch historical evens unfold live, such as the inauguration of the President through various public websites.
• Use PowerPoint – either teacher or student created – to highlight the main points of a lesson or unit. Interactive whiteboard flipcharts are also a new application for creating lesson presentations.
• Use the internet to talk about reliable and unreliable sources of information.
• Internet Research: do webquests, which teach the students techniques for sifting through mountains of information to get appropriate and truthful information they need.
• Check the top news each day for current events, or use different sites to talk about critical thinking skills for evaluating information.
• Use a free blog and have a group of students update it daily or weekly with what has been going on in class. This way, parents and family can check in too. You can also find “pen-pal” blog classes to communicate with across the country and around the world.
• Use your imagination!

There is an endless array of uses for classroom technology and methods to incorporate it. You don’t have to create a website with video feeds your first day. Start with an educational video or a lesson on doing online searches. From there, the options open up infinitely.

Especially disturbing is the introduction of PowerPoint into schools. Instead of writing a report using sentences, children learn how to decorate client pitches and infomercials…

It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? This is the way, Tufte says, to train “mini-bureaucrats.” And I would agree, except that I have seen PowerPoint used well. One example is from a fifth grade language arts class. The students were not getting the format of response to literature essay, no matter how much the teacher explained and showed them examples. Finally, she put aside the paper, and told the students to do a PowerPoint presentation. She gave them guidelines: they had to have a topic sentence, they had to have at least three pieces of evidence, they had to have quotes from the story they’d read.

All of these were the elements she’d been talking about until she was blue in the face and still not able to convey the meaning to her students. She was delighted when every student was able to put together a coherent PowerPoint presentation that hit exactly the marks she’d been hoping for with their essays. What they could not structure on paper they were able to with the PowerPoint application. Now, Mr. Tufte says:

Student PowerPoint exercises typically shows 5 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation consisting of 3 to 6 slides – a total of perhaps 80 words (20 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work.

The teacher – actually the students – used PowerPoint as a springboard to the essay writing assignment—not as their writing and reading lessons for the week. Once the students had the concept down, she was able to help them flesh the presentations out into essays. As always, classroom technology only works when everyone is engaged – teacher and students, and it only works well when it is regarded as a tool, not an all-encompassing teacher-replacement. To maximize your use of PowerPoint and other media, check out this article. We don’t want to train any mini-bureaucrats!

How can a video improve the quality of your lesson? We know that videos, which can be found on any number of subjects at any number of levels, provide invaluable educational content: when we’re teaching our students about the four seasons, for example, video can be part of an exciting unit. You can use the video to explore seasons in different areas of the country; you can see weather extremes; you can hear music and see visuals that are far more effective than just words.

You can go on nature walks to see the foliage; you can have the kids write to relatives in different areas to see what the seasons are like there (or use email), you can check the weather forecasts online. There is an infinite range of possibilities, and video is a valuable component – but it is never the only component.

Besides that, digital media appeals to the students’ need for instant gratification, for auditory and visual stimulation. Our goal is to help students build better attention spans, to help them learn to focus – but doing it through means they connect with has much better results than if we ignore the fact that they are typically far more engaged with technology. We can lead them to our instructional goals using a language they understand.

There are times when school videos are counterproductive in your lessons. While they are great, like Dr. Marshall indicates, they should be an extension of the teacher – not a replacement for the teacher. You should not view it as an “extra” or something that allows you to check out: videos work well when teachers are engaged. If the teacher is engaged, then the chances that the students will be too is much greater.

Are you unlocking the potential in the videos you share with your students? You will be amazed at some of the results – improved critical thinking and problem solving skills to name but two. Click here for more information on using this remarkably effective tool.

While she and her daughter were watching a television show, they talked about what they saw. They talked about letters and numbers and practiced the alphabet. After, she casually asked her daughter if she could count as high as the character in the show, and her daughter showed off by doing one better. The mom commented to me that she felt bad letting her child watch TV, and I looked at her like she was crazy. TV, when used right, is tremendously helpful to children’s learning. And she did it right.

This mom knew instinctively that video shouldn’t be passive, and that is really the key to meeting your objectives. You know what it feels like when you watch television at home: you kind of get this glaze in your eye; you sit and just wait for what is going to happen next. This is fine for home – and it’s nice to escape for an hour or two – but this is not a great use of your precious classroom minutes.

Teachers need to ensure that everyone – including themselves – is participating in the video. When you turn on the video, no one gets to turn off his brains. If this happens, your objectives will not be met, and you are just filling up time.

School videos can be an effective component of elementary lesson plans, and there are a variety of ways to engage students in active learning. Here are two tips:

• Watch a segment of the video without sound. This will force the students (force in a nice way, that is) to provide the narration. This can be such a great window into their thinking.
• Watch a segment without picture. The students have to visualize the content based on the narration. It is working different brain muscles, as it were.

I even threw in another important tip in here: segments. Five minutes of well-used video can be much more effective than 50 minutes. Research tells us that the average attention span for children is about one minute for each year of their lives. So, a seven year old will have a seven minute span. That doesn’t mean you can’t show longer videos; but you have to do something to spark that attention and engage the mind often. Here are some other great tips to get you started.

But will they see what we need them to see? This is where the teacher comes in. Videos are wonderful tools, but like any tool, the outcome depends on the skill of whoever holds them. So to make sure your students are meeting your instructional goals, it is important to use videos correctly. Some people look at me like I’m crazy when I say this: how do you not use a video correctly? You just put it in the DVD player and there you go. No! If that’s all you’re doing, then chances are your objectives are not going to be met.

There are a few problems that can occur with videos – through no fault of the videos themselves! But whenever you turn off the lights, little people are likely to get sleepy. Students are going to start thinking about what they want to do at recess or who they will sit with at lunch or can I sneak and check my text messages. Teachers are distracted by their lesson plans for tomorrow or what they want to do at recess! It combines to create a colossal waste of time for everyone involved. Learning? Not so much.

This is why it is so important when you use a school video to use it well. The most important thing is to keep your instructional goals in mind and keep the students focused on those goals. How do you do this? Here are just a few good tips:

• Give your students pre-activities, discuss what will be on the video and what they should look and listen for.
• Provide viewing activities. These can be worksheets or any type of activity that keeps the focused and makes them accountable for the material.
• Break the video into segments. 50 minutes of video is often too much, but five or ten minutes can be remarkably effective. Use what you need to teach, not to fill time. The rule is the video clip should be no longer than twice the age of your class.

Are you using media to its best advantage? Are your goals being met? If not, don’t throw out the video. Just change your method of using it. For help in using videos more effectively, check out this link.

Whatever your thoughts on Direct Instruction, it’s hard to argue with results like the following: Siefert Elementary in Milwaukee was one of the worst schools in the state. In just three years, they raised the number of fourth graders who scored proficient or better in reading from 22 percent to 57 percent. Math proficiency went from 11 percent to 48 percent, and social studies saw an increase from 13 percent proficiency to 61 percent.

All due to Direct Instruction, Seifert says. In this model, teacher and student interact in a prescribed way. That is, a concept is explained explicitly and a demonstration given – all while students and teachers interact continuously to ensure students understand the material. It is very teacher-focused, as opposed to more exploratory, experimental models. While it may sound contrary to how many of us teach and were taught to teach, the research backs this method up. So how does a school video fit into the lesson plan of a Direct Instruction classroom?

The truth is that it fits in exactly as it should in any classroom. The video doesn’t become the teacher – the teacher is still a vital part of this lesson (or should be. Put the grading pen down and participate, teachers!). There is teacher engagement at all steps of the video process – you can’t really put your feet up and watch it like you would television.

From pre-viewing activities to post-viewing follow-ups, the teacher needs to teach. The video, as wonderful as many of them are, can never take your place. Many teachers, regardless of whether they are in DI classrooms, stop the video, ask questions, and point out items of particular interest. Activities like these are really what make videos so effective in any type of classroom.

The point is to realize that media is not passive. Videos should be part of active learning where teachers and students interact with each other and the material. Whether or not you are a proponent of DI, there can be no arguing with the anecdotal and scientific evidence that videos are extremely effective when used correctly. To ensure that you are getting all that you should be out of any video you share with your students – and that they are actively engaged, click here.

There may be debate as to what teachers should include in their lessons, but the bottom line is that as students progress through the grades and go to college or the work force, they will need the skills to thrive. And invariably these skills deal with technology. Here are just a few reasons to incorporate various media and technology:

· It helps teach planning, reasoning, and critical thinking skills.
· It helps facilitate authentic communication.
· It helps improve decision-making.
· It fosters creativity.
· It prepares them for the challenges ahead.

Technological skills are no longer “nice to have.” Rather, they are a necessity. You don’t have to teach technology per se in order to reap the benefits. Instead, using a simple tool, such as a video, allows you to integrate classroom technology in an effective way. A study by the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology found that students showed improvement in the following areas:

· Content area learning
· Higher level thinking skills
· Problem solving skills

An important study, “The Future of Children: Children and Computer Technology,” found that when teachers used media, including video, effectively, students were more actively engaged, participated better in groups, and interacted more in class. Teachers were also able to reach more students, and that is key in helping each child succeed in the classroom.

Chances are that you already incorporate technology into your lessons in some way. Many teachers incorporate internet research into current events lessons; others may check the weather online with their students as part of a morning routine; still others stream videos on anything from presidential debates to sight words. There is no shortage of ways to incorporate digital medial into your lessons. For tips on getting started, click here. And good luck! This is an exciting time in education, and technology is a great tool.

When using any type of media in your classroom, it is helpful to develop a good anticipatory set. This addresses key questions and helps focus the lesson before you present the video. Ask yourself:

· What do my students need to know before we watch the video?
· How can I excite their interest and keep them focused?
· How can I let my students know what is coming in age-appropriate terms?

You can approach this in any number of ways, but I like to use pre-activities that relate to the video content. For instance, if you were showing early elementary students a video related to number words, you could have them hold up their hands. Can you show me zero fingers? Can you show me many fingers? A few fingers? This gets them thinking about the terms they will be hearing and seeing in the video.

You can also use educational videos in your anticipatory sets to jump into your lesson in a way that will generate interest and provide needed variety for students. Say, for instance, you were going to have your students start a composting program at your school to reduce waste from the cafeteria. To give them an idea of what composting is all about, you could show segments from a video directly related to that subject. This allows them to see the process in action, model the steps in the process and show why it is good for the environment.

There really are unlimited ways to use media in the classroom. If you find your students are taking out the pillow and blanket – metaphorically speaking – then make sure you are using the videos as complements to your lesson, not as the whole lesson itself. There needs to be a point, a focus, in order for children to learn and for the media to work its magic. For some tips on making the most of your anticipatory sets for video, click here.

Using a video to its best advantage involves much more popping the DVD into the player and turning down the lights. Several techniques can help you maximize the great potential of videos in your classroom:

· Do some pre-video work. Talk with your students about the main points in the video or any new vocabulary. Give them a viewing activity. For elementary students, this can be as simple as watching for specific images or colors – whatever your teaching objective is. This will also keep them focused on the video.

· Use the video as part of your lesson but not the total lesson. Using an entire video when just a portion would do is counterproductive. Students lose focus, and you end up wasting valuable instructional time.

· You can break the video into smaller segments. In between segments, take breaks to discuss or do an activity. This allows for students to remain focus and not be lulled to sleep by the flickering lights.

· Feel free to stop the video any time. Ask a question. Highlight a particular point or image. This keeps focus and keeps students engaged. When they know they are responsible for the material and they will have to participate actively, it gives the video much more value.

· This brings us to a very important point: make the students responsible. A video is not just time to sit mindlessly and passively. Use videos for active learning by building tasks and opportunities for discussion into your lesson plan.

Teachers have to juggle several balls during each class. When using media, they have to make sure the videos are pertinent to the lesson, they have to provide quality activities, and they have to make sure the students are actively engaged.

Are you using videos as well as you could be? Improve your lessons right now by watching this video “The 7 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make Using Video in the Classroom” and by downloading and following the techniques in the Free Expert Guide.