USING EDPUZZLE IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM

 

USING EDPUZZLE IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM

I carried out this activity last Friday, just a few days before Saint Patrick's Day, using a short authentic video about the history and traditions of the celebration. I chose this video because it connects with a real cultural event that we will celebrate in class on Tuesday 17th. In this way, students can start becoming familiar with the celebration beforehand and gradually learn about its origins, traditions and symbols. I think this makes the listening activity more meaningful, as students can see a clear connection between what they learn and what we will later do in class.

The learning objectives of the activity were to develop students’ listening comprehension skills through authentic material, help them identify both the main ideas and specific information in a video, and increase their cultural awareness by learning about an important celebration in the English-speaking world.

I edited the video using Edpuzzle, inserting several questions throughout the video. Some of these questions focus on specific details, such as the origin of the celebration or the meaning of some traditional symbols. Other questions focus more on general comprehension, asking students to identify the main idea of certain parts of the video or to reflect on why the celebration is so popular today.

The video was watched in class, which allowed us to pause when necessary and briefly comment on some answers together. After completing the Edpuzzle questions, students shared some of the information they had learned in pairs.

Although the main activity took place in class, I introduced a flipped element through a follow-up task. Students were asked to find one interesting fact, tradition or symbol related to Saint Patrick's Day and bring it to the next lesson. This next class has not taken place yet, as it will happen tomorrow (Monday). The idea is that students will briefly share their findings with the class, which will help us continue building knowledge about the celebration before we actually mark the day on Tuesday 17th.

One of the high points of the activity was that students seemed curious about the topic, especially because the celebration is happening very soon. The visual elements of the video helped them understand the listening more easily, and the questions in Edpuzzle helped them stay focused on the content.

For future improvements, I would probably include a short pre-listening activity, such as asking students what they already know about the celebration or showing them some images related to the festival to activate their previous knowledge. I might also extend the follow-up activity by asking students to work in small groups to create a short poster or mini-presentation about a cultural celebration in an English-speaking country.

Overall, this activity showed how tools like Edpuzzle can help make listening tasks more interactive and connected to cultural learning, while also encouraging students to take a more active role in the learning process.

Here you can see my edit in Edpuzzle (Wait...it takes a bit)