I was asked to focus on reading and writing with my grade 3 boys this year and have been racking my brain for lesson ideas that are interest AND effect - not easy!

anyway, I found this video on youtube and it made a great lesson idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY

IT's called Tony vs Paul. it's a stop motion movie, about 5 minutes long about 2 friends who fight and then make up. there's no dialogue, so it's easy to understand.

for my low level students, i made a reading lesson, where the paragraph i wrote is slightly different from the movie. after watching the movie and reading the story, students watch the movie again and circle the words that are incorrect. For example, the sentence may read "Tony punches Paul", but in the movie Tony KICKS Paul. It's also a great review of verbs!

for the higher level students, it turns into a 2 or 3 periods writing activity. Brainstorming verbs from the video, learning some adverbs to make it more interesting, then coming up with 12 or more sentence about the movie, which can be made into a story board or comic strip.

enjoy!