Some lesson ideas spring up from the craziest places. One day I was planning ahead and looking at a calendar and saw that March 22 was World Water Day. Not only that, but there was a QR code connecting to a video, and that got me thinking.
Later that day, I saw a video on Facebook. It was a poem written by a guy who was bullied when he was in school. He was heavy and he like pork chops and he got picked on. He talked about friends of his who also were bullied. He talked about how they feel the pain to this day as adults. And that got me thinking.
I teach at a private school that charges a pretty penny for tuition. Most of my 7th grade students carry at least one iDevice to class each day -- their own personal device. These kids don’t know about hunger or thirst or abandonment. I wanted to give them an opportunity to look into those worlds with videos.
I selected six social issues and found informative videos them. Students then had to team up and create a video along a similar topic.
The Original Videos:
The Student Videos:
Adoption/Foster Care:
Bullying:
Social Media Overuse:
Water Conservation:
In hindsight, I expected too much from them. I really thought I could tell them to create a video, and they would be able to figure it out. I really thought I could tell them to upload the video to YouTube and they could do it. What you see when you watch these videos is a spectrum of ability levels and interpretations of the term “video.” (Granted, the Google Presentations you see here were originally PowerPoints that ran on timed progressions. Looking at it like that, we can call it quasi-video.)
What this means is that next year I’ll tweak how I do this. Instead of assuming they can self-teach and figure it out, I’ll approach this lesson a bit differently. I guess we’re all learning all the time.
With that said, there are some real gems in this collection. I hope you found them and enjoyed them.
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