Google Slides Listening Captions
I was brainstorming ways to mix up listening practice. We’d already done EDPuzzle, LyricsTraining, and ordering the lines–combined with a visual representation of a video my new daughter exchange student made to educate Americans on how meals SHOULD be. (She’s taking a foods class, and everyone is grossed out by vegetables…fortunately we were listening to “¡Qué asco!” that week already!)
I knew I needed to do something to prepare for the children’s menu design unit, AKA “the taco project.” I had already taken an informal poll of what “solutions” to the obesity and diabetes epidemic they wanted to focus on: food, exercise, or both. We had been doing plenty of “ejercicio” brain breaks a la Donna, and we had already done a taco EDPuzzle, so I figured it was time to look up some kid exercises that they might want to suggest/illustrate on their “good choices” children’s menus.
It turns out I’m a little indecisive, though.
At first, I figured I should pick out some screencaps and have the young ones match captions I translated from the audio to them. Then I got to thinking, “Well, heck, they’ll just read ’em and match ’em.” So THEN I took ANOTHER video and made Spanish captions to go with those screencaps.
I was still undecided, so I experimented on my patient and enthusiastic first period guinea pigs with both and ended up with this:
Some key features I’d like to point out:
- I put the video my little cuyes deemed easier to understand first to prime their little ears.
- I also put the Spanish captions first, in hopes of getting them to listen for the key words and just match by sound initially. If they read to figure out the pictures for this one, so be it.
- I embedded the videos so those who needed more than the “despacio” (.75 speed) and the “muy despacio” (.5 speed) play-throughs could use it to replay as much as they needed (while I conducted Duolingo experiments on the rest…) HINT: it’s fun to ask the class if they want to listen to the video normal, despacio, o MUY despacio, o DOBLE once you’ve illustrated the different speeds.
I did caution the young ones not to use captions, so they would be prepared for the listening assessment next week…but I suspect some did anyway. And NOW I can’t decide if I should add ANOTHER step where they DO use the CC option!
Guess next week’s assessments will tell!
