This week I used some great videos with my autistic kids. One little boy has a heightened interest in ospreys so I found a video of an osprey hunting for trout, grabbing one, and returning to feed his babies in the nest. Since one of his goals is to answer wh-questions from a story after a first reading, I thought I would use a video about something he was interested in to work on that goal. We also worked on his listening quietly, rather than narrating with his script, and attending so when I periodically stopped the video, he could answer my questions. The videos did have some higher level vocabulary that needed to be explained such as the rivers were “teeming” with fish, the osprey’s “acute” vision, or its “hungry brood” to feed. There is plenty of opportunity to ask questions like, “Why did the osprey drop the first fish?”
At the website for National Geographic Kids, you have a choice of viewing many excellent, short videos of birds, bugs, fish, mammals, reptiles, etc. We watched a video of woodpeckers preparing an old tree to house his winter’s stash of acorns.
Check it out. What sources do you use for great teaching videos for kids?
