© 2012 Michael Coghlan, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio

The New York Times Learning Network has just announced the student winners of one neat contest and unveiled the beginning of another one.

The one just completed was the Second Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Contest, which is a great idea for English Language Learners and, in fact, all students. My ELLs have been doing this kind of project for awhile and you can see lots of their examples at The Best Resources For Learning To Use The Video Apps “Vine” & Instagram (in fact, the Learning Network used one of them as a model when they first began the contest).

Here’s one of The Times’ winners from this year:

The contest they’re just beginning is their fourth annual Our Year in Rap Student Contest. It’s probably not that feasible for ELLs to participate — other than those who are Advanced — but it’s fun one for everybody else. You can learn more about it at the link.

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.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Animals.