Videos

I'm always amazed at the wealth of availability of on-line videos to help enhance classroom lessons.  Today I began a unit about Switzerland in my classroom and was able to share exciting "tourist" type videos with my students to peak their interest as well as to help them learn about this very exciting small country.  There are so many countries from around the world that put up videos promoting their homeland. In doing so, they not only promote sites of interest, but the culture of the people, food specialties and traditions from long ago.  Before beginning a unit about another French speaking country I like to see what my students know about it before we begin.  For Switzerland, the most common pieces of information was their knowledge of cheese, chocolate and the Alps.  One of the videos also allowed us to discuss what it means to be a "neutral" country in the world.  This was definitely a great springboard to our unit. I look forward to continuing our exploration next day. :)