Video · Teachers Media
Using Video To Improve Literacy
Video is a serious literacy tool — not because it replaces reading and writing but because it gives pupils rich common experiences to talk, read and write about. Used with intention, a short clip can lift a whole unit of language work by supplying context, vocabulary, and a shared reference point that no worksheet can match.
About this video
The evidence base for using multimedia in literacy teaching is now sizeable — from Mayer's multimedia learning principles to the EEF's more recent guidance on oracy and vocabulary. The consistent finding is that video plus structured talk is one of the highest-leverage combinations for building oral language, background knowledge, and the specific vocabulary pupils then use in their writing.
What matters is the purpose. A film clip that plays passively while pupils listen achieves little. A carefully chosen 90-second extract, paused deliberately at a moment of tension, with a specific talk task attached — "predict what happens next, using two of the words on the board" — is a different beast. The video becomes scaffolding for the language work rather than a treat.
For teachers of English, video works particularly well in three roles: as a source of shared experience for pupils who have little of the background knowledge a text assumes; as a way of studying craft (how does this director build tension in ways a novelist might?); and as a stimulus for their own composition, whether written, spoken, or made.
Three high-leverage moves
- Pause and predict. Stop the clip at a decision point. Pupils write or discuss what they think happens next, using target vocabulary. Then play on. The predictions become the language material for the next task.
- Watch twice, different lens. First viewing for what happens. Second viewing with a specific question — how does the director show us he's afraid without a word being said? The re-viewing is where craft is noticed.
- Talk before writing. Never move from clip straight to independent writing. Insert structured talk — pairs, then fours, then class — so the language is rehearsed aloud before it's asked for on the page.
Discussion prompts
- When you use video in a literacy lesson, are pupils watching or are they working? What's the difference in how you set it up?
- Which vocabulary do your pupils need most, and how could a well-chosen clip put those words in front of them in genuine use?
- What's one text (poem, extract, short story) you teach whose comprehension would be transformed by five minutes of relevant video?
Try this in your classroom
- Pick your next unit of work. Find one 60–120-second video clip that supplies background knowledge pupils would otherwise lack. Plan a specific talk task around it.
- Try the "pause and predict" structure with any narrative clip this week. Use target vocabulary as the constraint on their predictions.
- For an extended writing task, run a "watch twice" activity: first for the story, second for a specific craft move you want them to imitate.