The STOPPIES Lesson

busanjosh

This low-prep, student-centered online ELL lesson gives students a chance to hand out awards for their favorite things. I originally created this essentially self-access lesson for remote learning in the month of March, around the time of the Academy Awards, but it can be used anytime. Students write a script and then role play as an awards presenter for the STudent OPinion Awards … a.k.a The STOPPIES!

Language Level: Intermediate
Time: 50 minutes

I. INTRO TO THE STOPPIES (5 mins)

  1. Using Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, or whatever online platform you use to communicate with students, explain that today they will be handing out awards for some of their favorite things.
  2. Share two documents with the students:
    • A – The STOPPIES Ballot
    • B – The STOPPIES Script
  3. Tell student that the Ballot must be completed and submitted by the end of class, but the Script is just to assist them when they make their videos.

II. INTRO TO “FLIP” VIDEO MAKING (5 mins)

  1. Students in my class were already familiar with how to make a FLIP (formerly FLIPGRID) video from our previous lessons (and indeed it’s quite self-explanatory), but if this is the first time, you might need to do a little tutorial.
  2. For the purposes of this lesson, the FLIP “Topic” was moderated, so all student videos were only viewable by the teacher.
  3. I made this Topic with a video explanation (see below) as scaffolding for students. Feel free to check out the Topic on FLIP here: flip.com/f7595094.

III. STUDENT WRITING AND RECORDING (40 mins)

  1. After students understand their task, they can begin to brainstorm categories, fill out their ballots, and then film their award presentations.
  2. When students submit, teacher can respond to their videos with text feedback or video feedback.

POSTSCRIPT

Students really enjoyed this lesson as it gave them plenty of room to talk about topics that interested them, but it also gave them the comfort of some creative constraint (given the framework of the ballot). Higher level students embraced playing the role of an awards presenter by really getting into character. There were pencil-on-desk drumrolls, banana microphones, and action figure trophies. Lower level students were able to choose simple categories, and essentially explain some of the characteristics of their favorite things – an authentic language task they are confronted with in real-world conversations.

As a teacher, I also found this activity valuable as a way to get to know my students better. I often used the info they shared in their videos as launching pads to little pre-class and post-class chats, knowing they had well-formed opinions on the topics they decided to talk about in their videos.

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