Moviestorm - Teaching - Case Study

Case Study - Paul Carr

English Teacher, Sakuragaoka Junior and Senior High School, Japan

Paul Carr (aka kibishipaul) is a full time teacher of English as a second language at a private junior and senior high school in Japan. Student’s ages range from 11 to 18.

“I was looking for some way of creating simple animated movies for use as AV materials for my classes. Moviestorm was exactly what I needed. It is easy to use with plenty of ready made sets, stock characters and a large variety of one click animations and expressions. Perfect for me to create fast and simple movies.

The students have loved the videos and there is a lot of laughter. The Moviestorm videos make a welcome change from the standard textbooks and CDs. I have found that the students are motivated not only by the movie lessons themselves but how the animations are made. I'm planning to use Moviestorm with some small group classes I have to make short newscasts and travel reports. As I will also be teaching some younger students I will be using Moviestorm to practice certain grammatical constructions. I am also working towards making a textbook based around a short video story”

I have found that the students are motivated not only by the movie lessons themselves but how the animations are made."

Lesson Plan 1 – Conversation and Listening Practice

Conversation Practice for ESL

"There are three conversations in two parts.

- Part One has no sound. Students watch in pairs, then make a script conversation for one of the dialogs, then add the voice over in Moviestorm to create the lipsync this while the video plays.

- Part Two the actual conversations are played from the CD conversations in the textbook, and the students answer questions and fill in word gaps

The purpose of the lesson was twofold:

- Practise oral English

- Review a textbook listening to what they had already done. The textbook is made especially to practice University entrance test listening questions.

Give the students a visual idea of the situation that they weren't getting by listening to the CD only."

Lesson Plan 2 – Teaching Vocabulary

Anatomy 01

"A video to practice vocabulary connected with an anatomy topic.

The idea was to make a somewhat dry subject more interesting, so I made a story involving an alien from another planet looking at the various organs of an abducted human, who was eventually released unharmed.

Students were initially asked multi-choice questions, then given a second task of filling in the blanks.

I find Moviestorm very useful for preparing materials like this; they go down a treat with the students."

Lesson Plan 3 – Oral Practice

The Summer Hols

"The topic was to talk about an imaginary foreign holiday for one minute using past tense verbs.They each received a pack of 8 photos and had 30 minutes to write and the rest of the lesson to practice and record.

They worked in pairs, everything done by themselves and recording each other with my iPod. The recordings were given to me and I put everything together in Moviestorm. I jazzed up the lesson by giving girls boy characters, boys got old women etc. The following week we played the videos and I asked questions about each as past tense review.

The students really enjoyed the lesson and particularly seeing themselves as cartoon characters. As a result, we did a few other similar exercises after that."

Lesson Plan 4 - Words and expressions

The Midnight Mystery

"I have been working on some of my past ESL related videos, remaking them in MS for my English classes. This was originally made as a gif animation back in the Jurassic. The topic is a burglary and is intended to practice words and expressions related to facial descriptions with a side order of simple commands and assorted verb tenses. Target students had lower intermediate language skills."