Sue Kay has been an ELT materials writer for over 25 years. She is the co-author of ɫèAV's Focus Second Edition and is one of the co-founders of . In this article, Sue takes us through her experience of using video in the classroom and shows us how to motivate and engage students with authentic video.
When I started teaching in the early 80s, video was a novelty in the classroom. We only had one video player for the whole school and had to book it a week in advance. There was very little published material available, but thanks to the rarity factor, the students lapped it up.
There was no problem with getting them motivated, even if the lessons accompanying the videos were not particularly exciting and consisted mainly of comprehension questions. Lucky for me, our school had a very dynamic Director of Studies who gave great teacher training sessions and I was very taken with a presentation he did on active viewing tasks.
I was, and still am, a big fan of the Communicative Approach and I embraced the more interactive video tasks enthusiastically: freeze frame and predict, watch with the sound down and guess what people are saying, listen with the screen hidden to guess the action, etc.
When I’m preparing a video lesson, I still try to include at least one of these activities because the information gap provides an ideal motivation for students to watch the video and check their ideas.
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In the old days, video could motivate and engage a class because it was something relatively new, but what about nowadays when video has gradually moved from a ‘nice-to-have’ element of new courses to a ‘must-have’?
We teachers have unlimited access to videos, either those that accompany our course or on the internet. But has this affected motivation? Has video also become harder to use as a motivating factor in the classroom?
Yes and no.
Teenagers have grown up with a smartphone in their hand. They live their lives through video - filming themselves or one another, uploading and sharing video content on TikTok or other similar platforms, accessing YouTube on a variety of devices, and even aspiring to be like the YouTubers they spend hours and hours watching.
The importance of this to the way we teach is summed up by this quote from The Age of the Image, “We can’t learn or teach what we can’t communicate – and increasingly that communication is being done through visual media.”
Video is the ideal medium for teaching 21st-century skills and visual literacy. None of my students bat an eyelid when I ask them to make a video for homework, film themselves telling an anecdote, watch a grammar explanation online, or do some online research.
But in terms of what we watch in class, our videos need to work harder than before. In my experience, students won’t tolerate boring or unnatural videos, just because they’re in English. Because they watch so many online films, documentaries and series, students are used to high production values, strong narratives and authentic material.
When we were writing the second edition of Focus, we were lucky enough to have access to the BBC archives. However, just because something has appeared on the BBC it doesn’t mean it is suitable for our students. In my experience, there are certain criteria that needs to be fulfilled in order to motivate and engage students with video.
First of all, it helps if a video has a visual wow factor. This may be an unusual setting or a location with breathtaking scenery. If there’s no visual interest, you may as well do an audio lesson. However, stunning places and incredible landscapes won’t hold the students’ interest for very long.
There also has to be something in the video that the student can relate to their own lives. For instance, one of the clips we chose for Focus Second Edition is set in an amazing place in Turkey, popular with tourists who visit in hot air balloons. The students are unlikely to have visited this place, but to make it relatable and interesting for students, we chose an extract that focuses on the caves that older generations still inhabit, while the younger generation have moved to the nearby cities. The topic of young people leaving the countryside for the big city is a topic that will be familiar anywhere in the world.
A generation that have access to endless TV series and films on demand expect a good story. While this can be an episode from a drama - it doesn’t have to be fiction. It can be an inspiring story of human achievement or any kind of human-interest story that follows a journey and has a story arc.
Generation Z and Alpha tend to be very socially engaged and open-minded; they want to change the world. So videos that air social issues are ideal as stimulus for discussion. For example, in Focus Second Edition we’ve included a video clip about a project that’s underway in Holland, where students can have low-priced accommodation in a Care Home in return for some help with the elderly residents. In class, we’ve used this video clip as a springboard for discussing relationships across generations.
Videos that fulfil these criteria raise motivation in class because they facilitate more interesting lessons. If the video is visually engaging, it’s easier to write the active viewing tasks I mentioned earlier. If the topic is relatable on some level, the lesson can include personalization and discussion, which wouldn’t work if the content was so far removed from the students’ reality that they have nothing to say about it.
I’m particularly keen on videos that are engaging enough to facilitate follow-up tasks that might spark the students’ imagination and help to put them in other people’s shoes. For example, in Focus Second Edition, we’ve included a video about window cleaners on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world.
As you can imagine, the film shots are breathtaking and have not only the wow factor but the ‘agh factor’ too for people who are afraid of heights. The presenter, Dallas, joins the experienced window cleaners, and you can’t help but hold your breath as he climbs out onto the side of the building, which is a sheer drop of 800 meters below him. No wonder he has a dry mouth.
The short clip is so engaging that the lesson practically writes itself. Here are a couple of examples of follow-up tasks that are only possible because the video holds the students’ attention and ignites their imagination:
All this increased volume and choice of video is great, and video certainly still has the power to motivate our students, but I believe we teachers and materials providers need to focus more on the quality of the videos we use in class than the quantity.
In Focusyou can motivate and engage students with authentic video content from the BBC. Throughout the course learners will not only practice and improve their language skills, but also develop important life skills that will prepare them for the future.
Read our posts '21st-century skills and the English language classroom' and 'Key challenges in secondary education'.
When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia?
Do you ever find it hard to keep students focused and on task? Young learners get easily distracted and it can be hard to find ways to keep them engaged.
So what can we do to get, and more importantly, keep our students’ attention? Here are our five top tips.
Young learners have relatively short attention spans. In the classroom, it is rare to have the whole class fully engaged in something for a long time, since the children will have different interests and levels, so it is essential to plan a number of activities for each lesson.
The more variety you can include in the activities and tasks you plan, the easier it is to provide something enjoyable and relevant for each child. Choose short tasks and try to have a couple of extra activities up your sleeve if something you planned doesn’t work well. However, don’t worry if you don’t have time to do them all – you can always save them for a future lesson.
Another way of keeping students engaged is to mix up the classroom dynamics, having a combination of individual heads-down work, pair work, group work, and whole class discussions or games. When planning your lesson, consider how your students might feel at each stage. After doing some reading or quiet work, students may start to become restless, and this is the ideal time to get them up and moving about.
While you are in class, pay close attention to the mood of the class. When you sense that students are becoming distracted or bored, change the dynamics of the activity.
Ever notice that students become lethargic and show a lack of interest? Why not try introducing brain breaks at strategic points in your lessons? Brain breaks are short physical activities or games designed to get the blood flowing and to re-energize students to help them get ready for learning. They range from short activities that last a couple of minutes, to longer breaks that may be suitable if your lessons last more than an hour.
We can vary different aspects of the lesson using the previous strategies, but one thing that rarely changes is the role of the teacher! One way of keeping students involved is by giving them more responsibility and allowing them to take a more active role in their learning.
Peer teaching completely changes the classroom dynamic and has students teach their peers while you take a step back. For primary classes, ask one or two students to take charge of a ready-made activity, e.g. one from your course book. They should give instructions, demonstrate, monitor as necessary, and check answers.
When students are used to doing this, you can start to have them work in pairs or small groups to plan their own activities to use in class.
Of course, nobody is perfect and there will be times when you lose students’ attention and they are not on task. For these occasions, you can use a wealth of classroom management strategies to regain the class's attention. Here are a few techniques:
Finally, if we want our students to be motivated and engaged in our lessons, we must show enthusiasm for what we are teaching. The more lively and animated you are about the lesson, the more the students will want to join you and learn.
There is a strong link between well-being and friendship, which is just as accurate for children as it is for adults. that children with stable friendships are happier, more able to cope with stress, and have higher self-esteem. Moreover, too, and children who experience friendship adjust more easily to school and perform better academically. School friendships are also a valuable way of learning social skills like sharing, resolving conflict, and engaging with peers positively.
Having friends is an important part of school life, and teachers can play a significant role in creating a positive classroom culture and helping children and young people to form friendships. How can you promote friendships between your students? Here are some ideas:
If there is an example of a good friendship in a book you are reading with students or in your lesson materials, draw your students’ attention to it. For instance, The Jungle Book is an excellent example of a story about friendship. Encourage your students to think critically about the friendships that they read about. You can ask questions like:
By discussing friendship regularly in the classroom, your students will learn about the behavior and characteristics of being a good friend.
You can create lots of opportunities for students to build friendships with one another during class time. Design activities that call for pair or group work, and include at least one or two in every lesson. Focusing on a common goal or problem is a great way to encourage your students to bond with one another.As a bonus, this collaborative way of working promotes important 21st century skills like communication and problem-solving.
Another way of promoting friendships between different groups of students is moving them around. Adjust your seating plan regularly to ensure that all your students interact with and work alongside different classmates, to promote positive, friendly classroom vibes.
Friendship is a social skill that children need to learn – and you can help by teaching them. Be explicit about exactly what you expect from them. Saying, “Be kind” is an abstract, vague concept that children might struggle to put into practice. Instead, give them concrete examples of behavior, such as:
When you see a student engaging in these behaviors, draw attention to them and praise them.
But to really convey the importance of school friendships and kind behavior, it’s not enough to tell them. As the teacher, you must model the behavior you’d like to see in your students. Be consistently positive and upbeat in your interactions with students, thank your learners when they offer help with something, and try to refrain from sounding impatient (even when you are!). All these steps will help to build a positive classroom culture where students feel secure, supported and happy.
Conflict is an inevitable part of school life, but you can help students to navigate arguments and other difficult situations in the classroom. If two students argue, you can help them to resolve it with the following steps:
Following these simple steps teaches children a framework for resolving conflict and gives them the tools to process strong emotions.
An excellent way to promote a positive classroom culture is to do friendship-focused activities with your students:
You could do a Venn diagram activity, where students work in pairs to discuss and write down things they have in common and areas of difference. It’s good to pair students who don’t spend much time together for this activity.
Another positive activity is a 'Honey Roast'. Give students enough squares of paper to have one for each of their classmates. Get them to write their classmates’ names on the paper, and then, on the other side, write down a compliment or something they like about that person, for example, “I like your handwriting”, or “You always use kind words”. Collect the pieces of paper and read out some nice examples to the class. Alternatively, give them directly to the students to read to themselves.
