I decided that as my report cards were almost done for the year, it was time to try out something new in the classroom. MovieTalk was it! I read through Bu Cathy’s blog about Movie Talk and had a look at Martina Bex’s blog. Martina had a cool powerpoint which she used in conjunction with a movie about two wildebeests. I ditched that particular one, as she used it with beginners – I wanted something to revise lots of language we had done throughout the year. Plus the cognates (like ‘tronco’ for trunk in Spanish) didn’t really suit Indonesian.

Someone suggested a clip from Frozen. I took a look at it and thought ‘Wow!’ I was able to use lots of vocabulary we had introduced already, such as ‘mau’ (want), ‘lari ke’ (run to), ‘tidak bisa’ (cannot), ‘berjalan’ (walk), ‘cium’ (smell – which I had done with Preps but not other year levels, but apparently it doesn’t really matter if you use new vocabulary – after all, the students can see what you are talking about, and I check for comprehension and also used a real ‘bunga’ for them to sniff!), ‘jatuh’ (fall down), ‘lihat’ (see), ‘punya’ (has), ‘sedih’ (sad), ‘senang’ (happy), ‘beri’ (give). Some new ones were ‘salju’, ‘es’ and ‘bersin’ (snow, ice and sneeze). You can see there are many high-frequency verbs in here!

Firstly, I watched the video at home and made up a script for the clip. I think I may have become a bit carried away and made the script too long, but as it is being used for revision I am hoping it will be OK. Then I made a powerpoint presentation with photo stills from the story and added text, a la Martina.

I showed the kids about 4 photo stills from the first scenes of the clip and talked about these. I asked them in L2, ‘Who has seen snow?’ Who has made a snowman? Do you eat carrot? Have you got a carrot nose? I showed them a flower and asked them to smell it – ‘Cium bunga’.

Then I began showing the clip (no sound) and stopping it everywhere something important happened that contained the structures I wanted to introduce/revise. I stopped it at the scene where Sven gives Olaf back his nose and they are happy.

Lastly, I showed the clip it its entirety without stopping, with sound. This meant the students still had the surprise at the end. There a a number of things you can do post-movie talk.

With my Preps – 2, I intend to a One Word Image about a snowman, so we can re-use the lovely structures we used in the movie talk. We will also choral read the power point story together.

Here are some activities I will choose from to do with Year 3s:

• Show them the story in text only (no pics) and have them ping-pong read or echo read.
• Show them text and one person acts out a line, others have to read and guess the line.
• Use words from the text in a Wordle. I read the story and they try to beat each other to find the word I stop on.
• Liar, Liar – I ask personalised questions from the story, they have to lie about the answers!
• Fix- It-Dictation – write a line that teacher reads, fix it, translate it.
• Choose 2 – 4 sentences, copy, illustrate.
• Quick Quiz
• Tidak Game – teacher reads lines from the story and makes up some silly ones that are untrue. Class has to listen carefully and shout, ‘Tidak!’ when teacher fibs.

Wow! I reckon that should keep me (and them) busy until the end of the year!

I also made a movie clip where I slowed down the clip to half speed, said what was happening, and included a text. This can be seen at my you tube channel, Indonesian Fun for Juniors. (Olaf dan Sven) If you click on the CC at the bottom of the screen, a red line should appear beneath it and text to accompany the audio will appear.

olaf-dan-sven-movie-talk   Here is the powerpoint I made. It does have one small error, which my students have not been able to find yet. I told them first one to tell me gets a prize. Can you find the error?

Helpful advice: Don’t talk about photo stills first with Preps, go straight into the movie clip – it was too much listening for them!