Multimodal Task: History in a minute (or two).
Levels: B1 (Intermediate)
Audience: B1 teenage students at 11th grade in public schools.
Skill focus: Reading, writing, and speaking.
Suggested tools: Powtoon, Shadow Puppet Edu, Canva, or any other platform available for animated-video creation.
Objective:
You will be expanding your vocabulary, putting in practice your reading comprehension, then your writing production skills, and finally, improving your pronunciation.
How will you do all of that? Good question! By choosing your favourite historical event/topic and then producing a 1-2 minute animated video summarizing it. I will be explaining the step by step ;).
Step 1 - Choose your topic:
Choose a moment on human history that interests you! Here are some examples, but you are not limited to them, you can bring another one if you'd like!
- Ancient Civilizations (such as the Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs, Incas, Sumerians, Romans, etc).
- The Renaissance.
- World War II / Cold War.
- Industrial Revolution.
- Important historical figures and their impact on humanity, such as Leonardo DaVinci, Beethoven, Cleopatra, Martin Luther King Jr, etc.
If you choose another interesting event from human history, I would suggest you considering a moment far from our present. 25 years from now could be a good limit.
Step 2 - Research about it:
Once you choose a topic you like, do a research about it by using your favourite web browser. You may want to check videos on YouTube, web articles, or even books online. Gather all key elements, think about things it would be important for us to know. To do so, you can think of answering the wh questions: when, where, what, why, (and how, even though it is not a wh question).
Remember to highlight all unknown words and then look for their meaning, this is key to expand your lexic!
Step 3 - Write your script:
Start writing the script! Summarize those key elements so you can answer all questions in maximum 2 minutes. Don't settle just for the vocabulary you know, expand just as in the reading! Include those new words you learn.
Step 4 - Record your voice:
Record your voice saying out loud such script. You can get help from Vocaroo, your smart device's microphone, or anything else that you have available for audio recording.
If you do not know the pronunciation of a specific word, look for it on an online translator that includes sound. I might suggest Reverso Translator, personally.
Step 5 - Edit a simple animated video:
After getting the script and audio ready, get creative and make the animated video! You can use many digital tools to do it, such as Powtoon, Canva, Shadow Puppet Edu, or even smartphone applications such as CapCut. It shall last 1 to 2 minutes.
Try including moving images and texts, maps, collages, and more! (So it doesn't look like a flat slide).
Once you have your video ready, upload it to YouTube and paste the link on the comments! If you don't want more people to watch this, you may set it up to Visiblidad: Oculta / Visibility: Unlisted.
I really loved completing your task, it’s such a creative and interesting way to learn english. I chose ancient Egypt and I focused on the construction of the pyramids because it’s a topic that always grabs my attention. I liked researching in english and discovering vocabulary that I usually only see in Spanish. Also, writing the script helped me organize the information in a very clear way.
ReplyDeleteI think your activity is very well planned as a multimodal task because it brings together a lot of different modes such as text, images, narration, and movement in the video to support meaning. That combination made the learning experience much richer.
Finally, I really appreciated the freedom to choose any historical event because it made the task more engaging and personal for me, I love Egypt and it was easier for that reason. Your model was creative, enjoyable, and effective for developing vocabulary and oral skills at the same time. Great job!!!!!❤️
This multimodal task is engaging and well-structured. Students move from reading and researching, to writing a script, and finally to producing a spoken video — which supports comprehension and production of language. The use of images, audio, and animation encourages creativity and meaningful communication, not just memorizing information. The time limit pushes them to summarize key ideas clearly, and the digital tools develop both language and digital literacy. Overall, the activity is purposeful, motivating, and effective.
ReplyDelete