Welcome to Spotlight on Strategies Challenge! Our S.O.S series provides help, tips, and tricks for integrating DE media into your curriculum.
When students are learning new information, it is important to engage their senses. Video leverages both visual and auditory senses, but if students are not asked to do something with the information, watching a video can become a passive learning experience. By using audio files in the classroom, students can use their imagination to create a visual image of what they hear. This can help engage their emotions as they create a picture in their mind. According to Brain World Magazine, “the stronger the emotions connected to an experience, the stronger subsequent memory”.
- After reviewing the videos Grasslands, and Animals around Us: Grasslands, explain to students that you will be checking for their understanding of a prairie (North American Grassland) and a savannah (African grassland).
- Have them call out or raise hands after a sound effect is played, indicating whether the sound effect applies to a prairie (North American grassland), savannah (African grassland), or neither. After each one, have students provide evidence from the video segments.
- Play the following DE sound effects:
- Elephant (Savannah)
- Heavy rainfall (Neither on a regular basis)
- Cattle Stampede (Prairie)
- Ocean (Neither)
- Jungle (Neither- this may be confused for African Savannah, so provide support clues if needed)
- Toilet flushing *optional, just to add a little giggle
- Chimpanzee (Savannah)
- Sea Lion (Neither)
- Prairie Chicken (Prairie)
- Tiger (Savannah)
- Big Horn Sheep (Prairie)
- Wolf (Both)
- Have students create a compare/contrast Venn diagram on the two major types of grasslands.
- Listen to the song, “Habitat Scat”, then have students write their own rap, song, or poem about animals or a specific animal found in a particular grasslands habitat.
- Watch the following video segment, “Protecting the Balance of Nature on the Savannah”; then, create a poster to campaign for grassland survival.
- Select a topic that matches your curriculum.
- Find a variety of audio files (sound effects, songs, speeches, etc.) on Discovery Education on your topic or concept.
- Have students listen to the sounds. Ask them to identify the sounds by raising their hands and/or explaining what they are hearing.
You can take the challenge by:
- Implementing this strategy and letting us know how it went by posting a comment below.
- Using this strategies in your grade level planning discussions and/or professional development and reporting your events. (Remember we consider an event anytime 3 or more educators gather together… doesn’t have to be in a computer lab… could be sitting around the lunch table)
- Photocopying the flier and distributing it in your colleague’s boxes and/or posting it to your own BulleDEN board.