An English teacher diary

Edpuzzle is a tool that allows us turn any video into a task and assign it to a group. To put it into practice I chose This is not a drill with Greta Thunberg, as we were learning about the environment. I like it specially because the message is short, direct and it already has subtitles.

My learning objectives were:

- Understand the general message of the video.

- Identify the problems that affect the planet and possible solutions.

- Reflect into our daily actions and the impact they have on the environment.

With that in mind, I set these activities:

- Pre-task: Revise the vocabulary related to the environment, as well as how to give advice using should and shouldn't.

- During: Answer open ended questions about the content of the video and their own reflections related to the theme.

- Post-task: Debate about the video and the answers they gave. Create posters with the messages they vote for to put around school.

I didn't flip my class as some students don't have internet connection at home, but I gave them time to work on their own laptops to develop their autonomy. My students like working at their own pace, so I would highlight how easy it has been for them to do so as I could collect and mark their answers individually.

On the other hand, the Google Classroom account wouldn't let them log in, so they had to access using the code (which I will provide right away next time). Although it is an easy alternative, we realised the problem in the middle of the lesson and we had to stop everything until everyone could access the resource. 

My students were kind of lost at first but in the end they got the hang of it. I think Edpuzzle is a good resource that allows autonomy for our pupils while it helps us as teachers to process a wide range of individual answers that we would probably couldn't hear in normal circumstances.