Introduce Yourself with Animaker!

Mixer: Introductions (This activity is to warm-up student's prior knowledge of the language and to generate some ideas for the introduction video. You can alter the questions to reflect the level of your class.)

Write 2 questions on the board: "What's something interesting that you remember from when you were young?" and "What are 2 interesting things about you?"

Give a couple of examples, like, "I was bullied a lot when I was young," and "I like music and I can whistle very well."

If you'd like, you can have students write down other students' answers, collect them, read them, and see if students can remember (or guess) which students said the answers.

Tell students that they will be creating a video to introduce themselves to the other students. If you'd like, show them a video introduction of yourself that you made on Animaker. (See the 'How-to' notes.)

Presentation Part 1: Explain what a script is and that the students are going to write a script. (Note: You can adjust the number of scenes and the content according to the level of your class.)

Each scene will have a location, characters, and dialogue. You can provide the topic for each scene, but it will be fun for the students to decide all of the other details themselves.

For example, Scene 1: Introduce yourself.  Scene 2: Tell us something about your childhood.  Scene 3: Tell us 1 interesting thing about yourself. Etc. (Note: The videos will take some time to construct, so don't overload your students with scenes.)

You can even provide students with a template, like: Scene 1: INTRODUCE YOURSELF (Location:  __________. People in the scene: _________.  I say, "________________________".)

Presentation Part 2: Project the Animaker website on a screen. Walk your students through the steps of how to make a video. Be sure to include the the steps for logging into the website, creating an avatar, syncing your voice, and editing the length of scenes. (See the 'How-to' notes.)

For classes with students who have lower tech skills, you may want to break the steps into smaller activities.

Allow plenty of classroom time for your students to use their scripts to create their videos.

A good practice would be to group students (with a mix of tech skills) so that they can help each other when needed.

There are many ways to evaluate this activity. Here are 3 ideas:

1. Students could play their videos in class and the other students could ask questions afterwards.

2. If the class uses an LMS, students can post a link to their video on a discussion page. (See the 'How-to' notes). Then, other students could reply with questions, comments, and suggestions for editing the videos.

3. You could make a listening/reading quiz based on all of the videos, like 'identify the student who...".

If you post links on an discussion page, students can continue watching others' videos after class and replying with questions, comments, and suggestions for editing the videos.

Students could also add scenes to their videos with more information about themselves, like hobbies, interests, educational goals, etc.