USING WORDIA
June 22, 2009
Wordia http://www.wordia.com/meta/who_are_we is a visual dictionary where anyone can upload a video on a chosen word, saying what it means to them or giving a deffinition of the word.
It was recently “Refugee Week” http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/ and wordia grouped “word videos” together, such as Freedom, identity, community, home, dentention… You can find the videos here: http://www.wordia.com/Themes/3-Refugee-Week-2009
Lesson idea.
Dictate the following:
__________________is a person who flees to escape conflict, persecution or natural disaster
Ask STDS to fill in the blank, they may need some clues.
Tell them about wordia and that wordia has grouped some words together which people thought had a relevence to being a refugee, or words that were somehow connected. Ask them if they can predict what some the words might be. Put their words up on the white board., it doesn’t matter if they are not the same words, in fact all the better. Ask them why they chose their words and to come up with a short explanation of what their word means to them. You could tell them that you’re going to film or record them and why not upload them to Wordia.
After show them some of the videos and get them to write down any words or phrase they remember. You could perhaps concentrate on one more than the others. There’s one of a man from Senegal talking about the word community, I found it a little dificult to catch all the words, however my French speaking students found easier, maybe they are more used to Senegal speakers, this probably says something about how we get used to certain types of intonation and stress paterns.
To finish you could get them to do a running dictation with this:
The purpose of Refugee Week is to deliver positive educational messages that counter fear, ignorance and negative stereotypes of refugees, through arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK, and promote understanding about the reasons why people seek sanctuary.
And ask them what they could do to make refugees feel more at home. Look at the Simple Act page for ideas:http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/simple-acts/simple-acts.htm However be careful, some people might have very different feelings on this subject.
For homework give them this link http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/InfoCentre/positiveimages/ and ask them to chose one of the people featured.
Why not do other themes using Wordia and use them for lesson plans.
