Spin - a video lesson
This lesson along with my signs lesson are by far my most successful video lessons to date. You can download the Spin worksheets and video at the Vimeo video links below. There is both an intermediate and advanced version. The intermediate version is what I use with my high school students. The advanced version is quite difficult, so I recommend giving your students hints. This lesson can easily take up an entire class.
The Lesson:
Students guess what will happen next through subject and verb pairing. Grammar focus is on both the past and future tense. The lesson also introduces students to some important collocations. First, review the vocabulary. Next, get the students into small groups. Play the video and pause it when the “What will happen next?” question pops up on the screen. Give each group 30 seconds to a minute to match a subject and verb/phrasal verb to create a sentence. The sentence will be what they thing will happen next. Groups receive one point for the correct subject and one point for the correct verb. There is a small chart to help them keep score.
I usually tell them that the first two subjects are both “The DJ” and then let them guess completely on their own after that with a few little hints here and there. You can give hints like, “A good think will happen…” or “The subject is a woman…” or “The subject is the last person you saw on the screen” etc.. For the last part of the lesson members of each team must work together to rewrite the story using the past tense. This can be tricky as they must remember the order in which things happend.
Enjoy!
Renaud
