Screenshots and videos

Aim:
   telling a story, speculating
Skill:
   speaking
Age:
   teens, adults
Level:
   pre-intermediate, +


What I wanted:
With two pre-intermdiate students we were doing restaurant-survival English, to wake them up, put them more on the ease and reduce anxiety before actually speaking (ordering, asking about the menu, etc.), eliciting what they were supposed to have learned I used this activity.


Steps:


Before the lesson (preparation about 10 minutes) :
1 choose a prank video.
2 watch the video and take screenshots at certain points. (8-10 pictures)
3 open a collage creator (I used Collage Creator Lite, free) and put 6-10 photos on the canvas, not in the original order.


The lesson:
1 Give your students the tablet, tell them these photos are taken from a video. (Thanks Jamie Keddie:))) Ask them to study the pictures, they might say what they can see.
2 Tell them to try and guess the story by dragging the photos in the order they think they were originally, and tell the story.  They might want to use 'maybe', 'perhaps'.)

3 Retell their stories just to check if you understood everything clearly.
4 Show them the video. (See their faces :D:D, no more yawning.)

5 Ask them to tell the original story.




Follow-up:
grammar: negatives (correct their original ideas: 'the man isn't angry, the guests aren't explorers', etc.)
writing: they may write a short paragraph telling the story itself, the original story or another prank.




What happened:
It worked out fine for us, ice broken, brains shaken up, smiles, recycling of vocabulary, soaring fluency, ..... 
As I hadn't shown this couple any prank videos beforehand they were really surprised. I was a bit scared when I saw their reaction during the video... hmmmhmmm :D:D
They (in their mid-thirties) just love touching the tablet, dragging images, doing whatever with it.)