5 Tips for Choosing Videos to Use in Daily Lessons

1. Acknowledge the Visual/Aural Learner
Videos please both visual and aural learning styles. For this reason you might consider including videos in your lessons. Another option you could try is assigning videos as homework. Students could then come back to school the following day to discuss the video with the class.

2. Use Pop Culture
This can be especially helpful for creating lessons that linger in students’ minds and leave a lasting impact. Do this by:

1. Using educational videos for lesson plans (i.e. Cosmos, Planet Earth, Bill Nye the Science Guy, etc.)
2. Using meme-like videos (i.e. remixes of the “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That”) as a tool to lighten up the mood for the lesson to come.

3. Keep Videos Short and Upbeat (Preferably Less Than 5 Minutes)
If you have a longer video, try to select a few segments rather than showing the whole video (less is sometimes more).

4. Stay Focused On Topic
If the video is not going to add to the students’ understanding of the topic, then don’t use it. Need help cropping a video that’s too long? Try downloading helpful apps like Replay or Video Trim and Cut to edit your videos for free!

5. Show Captioned Videos (If You Can)
Or provide a transcript. This is not always necessary but helps if you are showing detailed/longer videos. Especially if you are providing questions afterwards.