Multimedia Monday: Cat Stevens

Another lesson courtesy of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. One scene features this song by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), and I decided it would be a good change of pace to do a listening activity.

The lyrics are very straightforward, with relatively simple language.  I had my students work on a fill-in-the-blank activity with the lyrics beforehand, then we watched/listened to see if they got it correct.  I imagine you could easily play a memory game or have a writing activity after the video, as it has a rather cohesive narrative.  For my students, though, it would have been redundant.

The song went over surprisingly well with the younger intensive course.  I wasn't really expecting Yusuf Islam's mellow acoustic stylings to be at all popular, but we ended up listening to this song three times in class.   By the third time, they had the song pretty much figured out, and cheerfully sang along.

Again, if you ever want to use this or other videos on YouTube in an Internet-less classroom, YouTube Downloader HD always works very nicely for me.  Other videos and activities I've used can be found via the Multimedia Monday tag.