I’ve just heard about a Conservation International series of short videos featuring famous actors giving voice to elements of the environment — Mother Nature, Soil, Redwood Trees, Water, etc.

You can see the entire playlist here, and it’s very impressive line-up.

I’ve embedded two of them below — Edward Norton as The Soil and Julie Roberts as Mother Nature (you can read part of their scripts here).

They’re neat videos, and they got me thinking — one of the reasons ESL teachers like me have students use puppets (see The Best Resources For Using Puppets In Class) is because it makes students more willing to speak in English because it’s the “puppet” speaking not “them.”

Why not, I got to thinking, try having students pick an inanimate object and have them try to articulate what it would say if it could talk? Students could have some fun with it, including videotaping the object (maybe moving) when students are reading what they wrote.

I don’t know — it may be too “out there” but, hey, any short activity that encourages students to develop new vocabulary, speak, and have a little fun can’t hurt, can it?

I’ll bring it up this week, see how it goes, and report back.

And, since I couldn’t resist coming up with a headline for this post by playing off the “What Does The Fox Say?” song, I’ve also embedded a version of it that shows the lyrics as they’re sung.