Video resources for lower level?

Hello colleagues, What online video resources can you recommend for lower level English learners? Thanks for any and all suggestions!

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

Comments

Hi All,

I know the original question was about video resources for low levels but just to comment about We Are New York (WANY)resources. They are a terrific resource. There are lots of lessons for teachers to work with the WANY resources on the New York Adult Literacy Institute Wiki for ESL: www.nycadultliteracyinstituteesl.pbworks.com. It's an open site, but you need to request access to see the materials.

Best,

Moira

 

Thanks, Alison and Moira, for suggesting the videos and instructional materials at We Are New York. These are exceptional resources which I have used in my own practice. The videos feature immigrant stories and issues of relevance to adult learners, such as working in the US, smoking, love and money, communication with kids' school, older kids staying in school, problems with planning a wedding, and stopping domestic violence. There is even a humorous soap opera style story about asthma.

The videos are a bit long, but they also have resources on the site to support lower level learners, in particular, a digital magazine of sorts with photos and few words on the page that tells the story for low level readers. Amazingly, the video scripts are available in English, Bengali, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. There are also facilitator guides and discussion guides for each video.

I'm planning to use one of these videos in my summer class that begins in July, but haven't yet decided which one.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

Some colleagues may be familiar with the website REEPworld.org, which has beginning-level lessons for Health, Work and Family&Community lessons. If you go into the Health unit, look at the section on Health Problems. The 4th lesson has a beginning-level video on Depression that works well for low beginners. The video is broken into four segments which range in length from about 1 1/2 minutes to 3 1/2 minutes. There are interactive practice activities for each segment.

It's a pretty narrowly focused video on this health problem and it doesn't have professional actors. But it's accessible for students with limited English.

The other units on Work and Family also have good materials for beginners, but they're not videos per se.

Phil Cackley, REEP (Arlington Education and Employment Program), Arlington, VA

Susan and other colleagues,

For at least two decades I have kept and regularly updated a comprehensive list of mostly free web-based teaching and learning resources, as well as professional development resources, for adult basic skills teachers, including ESL/ESOL teachers. It's called The Literacy List. The ESOL/ESL resources page includes video resources marked by a red video icon. You will find that page here .

Most or all of the resources mentioned so far in this discussion thread are listed, and there are a few others as well. Some of the videos are for lower level students.

There are many more ESOL/ESL professional development videos on the Media Library of Teaching skills (MLoTS), www.mlots.org  My videographer colleague, Owen Hartford, and I have made some of these for ESOL/ESL teachers as "a video window on other adult basic skills teachers' classroom and tutoring sessions"  Many more ESOL/ESL professional development videos that we did not make are also linked on MLoTS  here.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com