I use short, funny video clips a lot when I’m teaching ELLs, and you can read in detail about how I use them in The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them). In short, there are many ways to use them that promote speaking, listening, writing and reading.

I’ve posted quite a few of them during the first six months of this year, and I thought it would be useful to readers — and to me — if I brought them together in one post.

I’ve also published quite a few during the previous seven years of this blog. You can find those in these lists:

The Best Videos For Educators In 2014 – So Far

The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2013 – Part Two

The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2013 — So Far

The “All-Time” Best Videos For Educators

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2012 (Part Two)

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2012 (Part One)

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2011

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2010

Part Two Of The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2009

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2009

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2008

The Best Movie Scenes To Use For English-Language Development

The Best Funny Videos Showing The Importance Of Being Bilingual Or Multilingual — Part One

The Best Pink Panther Fight Scenes For English Language Learners

The Best Videos Illustrating Qualities Of A Successful Language Learner

The Best Sports Videos To Use With English Language Learners

The Best Video Clips Of Sneaky Critters

The Best Videos Showing “Thinking Outside The Box” — Help Me Find More

Okay, now here are my choices for The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2014 — Part One:

Thanks to Edutopia and Amy Erin Borovoy, who published Five-Minute Film Festival: The Best Cat Videos for Educators, I found this great video that English Language Learners could watch and then describe verbally & in writing:

This is a great video for English Language Learners — there’s no dialogue, but it’s engaging and funny. ELLs can watch it and then describe in writing and verbally what happened in it:

This is a great video of a voice actor making 30 animal sounds. Even better, the name of the animal is displayed after each sound.

One way I reinforce new vocabulary is by playing sound effects games where I play sounds representing words we have recently learned (water dripping from a faucet, door opening, etc) and have students use small whiteboards to get points (that are just for fun) for the correct word. I use it when we learn animals, too. It’s easy to find these sound effects online, but playing a video like this and stopping it prior to the name showing up on the screen could be a lot more fun.

Having English Language Learners put words in the mouth (or thoughts in the mind) of puppets, animals, or photographs of people is a common activity in the classroom. It can be fun and less-threatening when it’s something/someone else who’s talking (or, at least, it can feel that way to the student).

You can learn specific strategies to use at:

The Best Resources For Using Puppets In Class

The Best Sites For Online Photo-Editing & Photo Effects, which includes a number of sites where you can choose photos and add “speech bubbles” to them.

The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English, which includes sites you can use online to actually provide audio to images or animations.

Another engaging strategy is show short animal videos and have students develop a dialogue or a series of sentences the animals might be thinking.

There are lots of suitable videos online, and you can start at The Best Video Clips Of Sneaky Critters. Students can simply act them out when showing videos on a screen with the sound turned-off, or you can be more sophisticated and dub the videos themselves.

Here’s an example that an environmental campaign created (several others will play through if you want):

I’ve previously posted about The Action Movie Kid and how they are great clips to show English Language Learners and have them describe what they see.

Their creator has just put all of them into one video. Here it is:

Here are several more fun short videos that English Language Learners could watch and then describe what they saw verbally and in writing:

Show English Language Learners this video and have them describe what they see — but be sure to warn them to try this at home!

Another day, another mid-year “Best” list (you can find all 1,300 Best lists here).

You might also be interested in:

The “All-Time” Best Videos For Educators

The Best Videos For Educators In 2013 – Part Two

The Best Videos For Educators In 2012 — Part Two

The Best Videos For Educators In 2012 — Part One

The Best Videos For Educators In 2011

Part Two Of The Best Videos For Educators — 2010

The Ten Best Videos For Educators — 2010

And you might also want to see The Best Funny Videos Showing The Importance Of Being Bilingual — Part One ; The Best Videos Illustrating Qualities Of A Successful Language Learner ; The Best Video Clips Demonstrating “Grit”; and The Best Fun Videos About Books & Reading.

You might also want to check out The Best Video Collections For Educators and The Best Video Clips On Goal-Setting — Help Me Find More.

Here are my choices for The Best Videos For Educators In 2014 – So Far:

Over at Vox, Ezra Klein interviews Ta-Nehisi Coates about his article, “The Case for Reparations.” I’ve embedded the video below, but Vox has a nice interactive table of contents that might make it more useful — especially if you don’t have an hour to watch the whole thing. I’m adding it to A Collection Of Useful Posts, Articles & Videos On Race & Racism.

Who’s not familiar with the famous Schoolhouse Rock video, I’m Just A Bill? Just in case, though, it’s the second video after this description. The first video is an updated version by Vox that is more cynical and more accurate (I’m not sure of that one will show-up in an RSS Reader).

I added this video to The Best Hans Rosling Videos:

I added this video to The Best Resources For Understanding How To Interpret Education Research:

I’ve previously posted the video and links to the full text of George Saunders’ well known commencement speech on “The Importance of Kindness.”

Now, this animation of part of it has been created….

I added this next video from Business Insider to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures:

I added this amazing video to The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History:

Watch as 1000 years of European borders change (timelapse map) from Nick Mironenko on Vimeo.

I added this video to The Best “Language Maps”:

TED Talks unveiled a new animation titled “The Long Reach Of Reason.”

Here’s how Chris Anderson at TED describes it:

Two years ago the psychologist Steven Pinker and the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who are married, came to TED to take part in a form of Socratic dialog. Steven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: The long reach of reasonSteven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: The long reach of reasonShe sought to argue that Reason was a much more powerful force in history than it’s normally given credit for. He initially defended the modern consensus among psychologists and neurologists, that most human behavior is best explained through other means: unconscious instincts of various kinds. But over the course of the dialog, he is persuaded by her, and together they look back through history and see how reasoned arguments ended up having massive impacts, even if those impacts sometimes took centuries to unfold.

They turned it into a “talk in animated dialogue form.” I’ve embedded it below, and you can read more about it here.

This next video is only a little over two minutes. Watch it til the very end…

Neil deGrasse Tyson shared this great video showing effective teaching in action. I’ve added it to The Best Places To Learn About (And View Video Clips Of) Teachers In The Movies:

Here are two good videos. Make a point of reading Joe Bower’s analyses of the South African reading commercial (the first video) and of the video of the young girl learning to ski. You won’t be disappointed.

John McCarthy shared this short video clip of U.S. Olympic bobsledder Lolo Jones. She begins by sharing her favorite quote (though doesn’t cite the source and I can’t find it online, either):

“A failure isn’t a failure if it prepares you for success tomorrow”

I showed the video to my students, along with writing that quotation on the board. Then, I asked them to respond to this writing prompt:

What is Lolo Jones saying about how we should view failure? What do you think of her view? To develop your position, be sure to include specific examples. These examples can come from the video, anything else you’ve read, and/or your own observations and experiences.

I added this to The Best Posts, Articles & Videos About Learning From Mistakes & Failures and to My Best Posts On Writing Instruction (where I collect all my writing prompts).

I’m Not Sure You’ll Find A Better Video Illustrating The Importance Of Libraries Than “El Bibliotecario”:

The Librarian / El Bibliotecario from Facebook Stories on Vimeo.

This is a very creative video from TED-Ed. You can see the whole lesson here.

Ann Foreman shared this Life of Brian video on Facebook. It’s a classic scene of how NOT to teach grammar:

TED Ed shared a nice lesson and video called “Who Invited Writing?” You can see the entire lesson here:

Do we teach like cats or dogs? This video was shared by Daniel Coyle on Twitter:

@Larryferlazzo Patience vs. speed. They both get to the bottom, but which one wants to try it again soon? Ha.

— karrieweb2004 (@karrieweb2004) January 20, 2014

I’ve added this video to The Best Online Resources For Teaching & Learning About World War II (Part Two):

I don’t think I’d use this with students, but, as Greg Toppo said when he shared this on Twitter, it seems like a “spot-on take on bullying.”

Because of that, I’m adding it to A Very, Very Beginning List Of The Best Resources On Bullying.