How to use FLIPGRID for Speaking Lessons?

What is Flipgrid? 

Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create and  facilitate video discussions. Teachers can create  groups for each classroom and in each group teachers can post questions or topics of discussions. Students can respond to the questions and topics by responding through video responses that appear in a display. The videos can be shared with classes, small groups, or any collection of users interested in a common strand of questions. However, in order to protect my students' privacy I have made the setting private and the video responses sent by my students are only available for viewing and commenting by peers from their own classes. 

What do I use Flipgrid for? 

I find Flipgrid to be a student - friendly application and it makes my speaking lesson more interesting and interactive as I could see my students' responses via video messages in Flipgrid. This helps me to assess their speaking skills especially during the pandemic where teaching and learning is conducted via online and conducting speaking lessons online is very challenging.  Besides, making all 24 students in a class to speak during an online lesson is an invitation for disaster. Therefore, I have started using Flipgrid to facilitate learning during my speaking lessons. Flipgrid allows me as a teacher to take time to watch and listen to my students' spoken responses and also provides opportunity for them to practice their speaking skills from time to time.  (from one unit to another)

Not only has Flipgrid made it easier for me to carry out online speaking lessons with ease, it also has a large space for storage (this storage is free if you use your MOE account to register) that I could keep all my students' video responses as evidence for their learning (PBD filing purposes). Flipgrid makes it so much easier for me to organise students' tasks and keep their responses without endangering my devices.  

Records in my Flipgrid 'Teacher Account'

Another good thing about Flipgrid is that it is linked to our MOE _ DELIMA account, so teachers can actually 'import' students' name lists and monitor their video submissions via Delima account. I watch my students responses on Flipgrid and keep their scores in Delima. I also leave written or sometimes video comments at the end of their videos to help them to look into  mistakes and contents. 

The video below shows some examples of students' video responses : 

Please be reminded that students can respond via the Flipgrid with any camera - enabled device. Teachers can also set the duration of responses for the topics given. Responses can be as short as 15 seconds and the longest response can be five minutes. Another interesting feature in Flipgrid is that teachers can also enable peers to respond to their friends' videos via video replies. I have enabled this feature for students within the same classroom. 

If you are interested in using Flipgrid in your lessons, click and watch the videos below and after that you will be all set to get started! 

a) Introduction to Flipgrid - Click Here 

b) How to Teach with Flipgrid  Video 1 - Click Here 

c) How to Teach with FLipgrid Video 2 - Click Here 

Digital Tools for Language Learning

In the 21^st century classrooms today,  digital tools should coexist with traditional tools. There are a mixed bag of online tools exist today that students do not need to rely only traditional tools anymore. The online tools are not only free but they are easily accessible and time saving. Besides, online tools provide wider and more precise information compared to the traditional tools. They allow teachers to plan interactive lessons based on specific themes and topics.

Enhancemyvocabulary

A website that provides a wide range of creative phrases. I use this website very often to look for creative phrases, especially for writing. I have also introduced this to my students and they find this site to be very helpful.  You can also find a plethora of vocabulary activities, online test and classroom ideas here!     

thesaurus.com

I introduced this site to my students so that they can effortlessly look for alternative words and their meanings. I find this web to be both reliable and user – friendly.

kahoot 

Many teachers in Malaysia have been exposed to Kahoot and are using it very often. Kahoot is a user – friendly tool for designing in – class questionnaires and quizzes. Teachers can design  quizzes, surveys or questionnaires to test the knowledge of their students on a topic. Kahoot is an interactive tool that promotes interactive and fun learning environment. Besides, Kahoot also allows teachers to get a better understanding of where their students stand while the students are engaged in a fun learning experience.

Socrative

Socrative is just another online tool created for interactive quizzes and questionaires just like Kahoot. However, it is less colourful and more suitable for matured students.

Languagetool

Language tool is an online grammar checker that helps in proofreading. All you need to do is simple type a paragraph in the textbox and it will highlight all the errors from spelling to grammar problems.

Enchantedlearning 

This page produces children’s educational web sites which are designed to capture the imagination while maximizing creativity, learning, and enjoyment. This page is very user – friendly and one can learn very fast. The page is designed to help young learners, therefore it has the simplest computer interface and the clearest instructions. The pages also has several educational materials that help to enhance creativity and promote fun learning.

Lexipedia

Lexipedia is a simple virtual thesaurus. All you have to do is to type any word and it will display all the words that can be associated with the target word. The words are also colour coded  according to their types and it also gives complete definition for the displayed words.

Snappy Words 
Just like lexipedia, Snappy Words is another visual thesaurus. Teachers can actually introduce a few thesaurus tools to students so that they can pick and choose the one that works for them

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Shahi 

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines pictures from Flickr and other similar pages. I think this is a great tool for English language learning.

Lingro  
Lingro is a very useful tool and I find it to be interesting. All you have to do is just type on the Lingro website and it will take you the web where you can click on any words on the web and it will translate the text/word in 12 languages. All you have to do is to simply click on any words and several definitions will be displayed. This is a very helpful too that will be very helpful to struggling ESL learners.

ThingLink 

ThingLink is a tool for making interactive images. Teachers could us ThingLink to teach students key vocabulary or students could design interactive images with the vocabulary provided. Anyways, there are just many ways that one can use ThingLink.

WordSift

I am sure all of us are aware of Wordle. Just like Wordle, Wordsift id just another tool where students type or copy and paste text and Wordsift will just sort them out based on word frequency. However, Wordsift has additional visual thesaurus displayed. With the visual thesaurus, students immediately see how words are grouped semantically.