This project idea was given to me by Renee Dacey, Spanish teacher extraordinaire at Burlington High School. I just used the BHS 1-to-1 iPads and a class YouTube channel to spice it up a little.

LESSON:
Given a unit in Spanish 3 where the kids were learning food and kitchen vocabulary and formal (usted) commands, I had the kids film their own cooking show. This way they had to give positive and negative commands to the camera/audience and use the chapter vocab too! (I paired this with a cooking scene excerpt from “Como agua para chocolate” by Laura Esquivel as an accompanying cultural reading .)

VideoEditor Free lets you take short clips that it merges into a seamless movie that is easily exportable to a variety of places.

PROCESS:
The kids typed up a script for themselves using the Notes app for iPad with the international keyboard/spellcheck turned on and then recorded their cooking show at home using the VideoEditor Free app for iPad. This is a great app because it lets you take short clips and then runs them seamlessly together for you (this is key for kids who have trouble memorizing a long passage in a foreign language OR for when the cookies have to bake for an hour!… don’t wanna watch that!). You can record & delete as many scenes as you want and can move them around once you’re done. Once finished, VideoEditorFree lets you export or upload to YouTube, so I had the kids upload their shows to my class site.

RESULT:
The project was a huge success: the kids really engaged the material and, though a few were camera-shy, the whole class enjoyed watching the shows while we all sampled the delicious goodies that had been prepared. Yum!