In the past when I thought about the Royals I always had in my mind the idea of distant, cold people, closed in beautiful mansions, far from common humans.
As an EFL teacher my mental image of a queen was that one of Elizabeth I, for me she represented the royalty for excellence, of course I changed my mind when Princess Diana arrived on the scene, she humanized the royals and I started to use newspaper articles about her life and her activities with my students.
But what if you find Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan giving ideas and topics for your lessons directly?
My encounter with Her Majesty Rania on the net was a real serendipity , I was on You Tube in search of a video to explain "stereotypes" when I found her wonderful video "Send me your stereotypes"( an intelligent way to shatter stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim world and culture).
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=TFf897bUW2Y&feature=channel_page
Of course I used the video with my students and I also organized a series of lessons about stereotypes in different areas of English and Italian culture and life.
Recently the Queen is helping EFL teachers more and more, she has published a new video whose title is "Y3W" Your Three Words where she invited people to send video clips with their stories told in just three words.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=WfbkxXrK8hA&feature=channel
The result is surprising, I tried this activity with my students and they liked it a lot, I guided them giving some main topics:
The assignment was: write "Y3W" about:
* your life
* your school
* your friends
* your experiences
* your daily routine
* a favourite thing you like to do
* your family
* your boyfriend/girlfriend
* your future
* your present
* your past
After my students wrote their stories in just three words we checked and shared them, then I let them organize the messages under categories: DREAMS and HOPES, PROJECTS, LIFE and LOVE.
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Comments
Dear Ester, Y3W works great with relutcant writers and..speakers. I used something smilat last year with my sixteen year old students who experienced a digital storytelling project. They produced a three minute video using only 3 words and a variety of images to support the theme: " a picture is worth thousand words". As they enjoyed this experience very much, I think I'll propose them to try this one now, and produce short video synthetizing their favourite Shakespeare play (among the ones they're studying) in 3 words.
Marinella
Yes Marinella, you're right! It's so difficult to motivate "reluctant writers and speakers", I think these activities are also useful to show our students they can (meaningfully) communicate with a limited vocabulary and number of words. Your digital storytelling project sounds good. I do agree with you because a picture does indeed capture a thousand words as well as our memories and emotions.