Tips for Planning an Effective Lesson with

Videos

Overview

Once you have identified an engaging activity to promote your students’ awareness of
language, you can then begin to plan your lesson. The following tips are created to help
ensure that your video lesson runs smoothly and effectively.

Before You Begin

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the reason I am using a video in class?
• How does the video relate to the overall course objectives?
• What student learning outcomes will this lesson target?
• Why have I selected this video? Is this the best choice?
• How will the students respond to this video?

Answering these questions will help you determine the purpose of the lesson. You can
then write your objectives.

Writing Objectives

As you are writing your objectives, keep the following points in mind:

• You might want to create a set of language related objectives and a set of content
related objectives.
• Consider sharing these objectives with the students so they understand the purpose
of the activity. Additionally, these objectives will help ease the doubts of students
who are used to a more traditional classroom and might be wondering why they are
watching a video in class rather than at home.
Pre-viewing Activities

Unless your activity requires that the students are surprised or unfamiliar with the video,
you should create a pre-viewing activity to prepare the students. Such an activity is
especially important for lower level students, who might struggle with the speaking pace
and expressions featured in the video.

Possible activities include:

• Exercises to introduce vocabulary, idioms, and slang
• Exercises to highlight a particular grammatical feature
• Questions to activate students’ background knowledge about the content of the
video
• Questions to gauge students’ opinions about the issue(s) featured in the video.
• Information about any factual information featured in the video

Tips
• Keep the activities short and focused.
• Try to introduce the video appropriately without giving away too many clues about
the content.

During-viewing Activities

Although it can be disruptive to stop a video at various points, it is beneficial to

periodically check in with the students. Therefore, unless the video is very short or your
students are highly proficient, it is advisable to briefly stop the video to check on their
comprehension. Possible activities include:

• Brief summarizing with a partner

• Guided questions with the entire class
• Quick vocabulary game or exercise
• Prediction of the upcoming content
• Brief fact check and/or character analysis

Tips
• Do a proper comprehension check with the students. Do not simply ask them if they
understand. Rather ask them to provide you with a summary or answers to guided
questions.
• Keep the activities short and focused.
• Keep the students on track, so as not to lose the momentum of the video.
• Provide a handout with vocabulary definitions or key information if the video is
challenging and/or if the students are beginners.

Post-viewing Activities

During the course, we suggested a number of useful activities for you to try with your
students. You can refer back to the course materials for ideas. However, you can further
extend the lessons by assigning the students homework. Some assignments include:

• Having a student write an opinion or reflection paragraph.

• Having the students write a summary.
• Having the students write sentences or a paragraph using the new words, idioms,
and/or language structures.
• Having the students write a character profile or biography about one of the
protagonists.
• Having the students write a short review.
• Having the students write questions to ask their classmates in class.
• Having the students write a dialogue with the conversational expressions.
• Having the students watch or listen to a related video/audio clip.

Final Reflection

After your video lesson, we recommend that you reflect upon the class. By doing so,
you can then make improvements and adjustments. In particular, you can ask yourself
the following questions:

• Were you able to meet all of your objectives? Why or why not?
• How did the students respond to the video?
• Did the students understand the language and content? How do you know?
• How effective were your pre-viewing activities? Would you change anything? Why or
why not?
• How effective were your during-viewing activities? Would you change anything?
Why or why not?
• How effective were your post-viewing activities? Would you change anything? Why
or why not?
• What would you change about your lesson?
• Overall how would you rate the effectiveness of your lesson?

For additional ideas about pre-, during, and post- viewing activities, you can refer to the
following website: Using Video 2: TeachingEnglish