Teaching with songs and music videos: WATCH & CATCH 3! A FUN way to REVIEW vocabulary

Welcome to the Song Activity Factory!

This week you will enjoy one of my favorite activities! WATCH & CATCH!

It is an activity with multiple extracts from MUSIC VIDEOS. Your students have to WATCH these extracts, and CATCH visuals in the videos, as well as words in the lyrics.

Description:  Students work in teams to identify, visually and audibly, 
grammar and/or vocabulary words in the music video and lyrics. 
Language level: A2 and above     
Learner type: All ages
Skills: listening, writing
Topic: varied
Language and grammar: parts of the body, colors, animals, 
adjectives, verbs, means of transportation, numbers, fruits, seasons
Materials: Vimeo video, YouTube video  
Duration: 20 -30 min
Downloadable materials: instructions; video mp4

INSTRUCTIONS

FACE-TO-FACE and ONLINE (GOOD connection) vs ONLINE (BAD connection)

If you are teaching this ONLINE, there are two ways to do this, and it all depends on how good your Internet connection is.

FIRST WAY (synchronously): If it’s possible for you to play the video smoothly to your students, just follow the steps 1 to 4. Needless to say, the same goes for F2F!

SECOND WAY (synchronously): If you have connection problems to play videos smoothly, students can do this individually. Explain the exercise and tell them to watch the video on their devices, and write down the answers to send you via chat box later. Give them a time limit of 10 minutes to watch the video and come back to class with the answers.

Step 1 (5 min)

Tell students they are going to WATCH a video with 4 excerpts from different music videos, and in each excerpt, they have to identify – CATCH– something visual in the video e.g. find a number or an animal, and also listen to something in the lyrics: e.g. listen to adjectives.

There are 4 video excerpts, and before each one, there are instructions to what the students have to catch. The excerpts are recorded 3 times in a row, so they have 3 chances to catch the things. For each right item, the teams get one point. The team with more points wins!

Step 2. (2 min)

Divide the teams. Remind them not to say the answers now! They must write their answers down to discuss with their teammates later.

Step 3. (10 – 15 min)

Play the video (pause it on each video instruction and make sure to review the things they’re supposed to see or find before they watch it. For example: ask students if they remember the parts of the body and ask them to give examples. Repeat the process for the 4 videos.

Answers:
Video 01 - JP Cooper - Too Close
LISTEN TO: 1- parts of the body (eye, hand)
2- a color (black)
FIND:  an animal (bird 00:35 min)

Video 02 - Koffee - Lockdown
LISTEN TO: a means of transportation (car)
FIND: a number (23)

Video 03 - Harry Styles - Watermelon Sugar
LISTEN TO: 1- fruits: (strawberries, berries) 
2- a season (summer)
FIND: something that starts with the letter K (knife)

Video 04 - Rina Sawayama - XS
LISTEN TO:  adjectives (Crazy, selfish, worth)
FIND: a verb (call)

Step 4. (5 min)

Put the groups in breakout rooms to discuss their final answers. Give them 5 min.

Back to the main room, ask the captain of the team to send you the answers for the video 1 via chat box privately. And award points. Keep score of the students’ points on the board. You can play the video 1 again, if necessary to show where the answers were.

Do the same for the other videos!

That’s it for this WATCH & CATCH quarantine edition!!

I hope you LOVE this music video activity just like me!

Share this to help other teachers, and also check out the previous versions of Watch & Catch:

WATCH & CATCH 2

WATCH & CATCH 1

These song-based lesson plans are sure to spice up your classes! However, would you like to think, feel and act more creatively on your own to be able to turn ANY song you want into an engaging lesson plan?
HERE are TIME-SAVING ideas that do the heavy work so you can focus on the most important: INSPIRING and MOTIVATING YOUR STUDENTS to learn CREATIVELY!