How do you engage students to discover good reads, use digital tools, talk in front of their peers AND teach them some Japanese phrases? All in one day?
Today I had a very good day as a teacher. I had four lessons of English as I had to make up for two lessons I lost to P.E. last week, and I had planned to challenge the students with a literary task. As we are reading Lord of the Flies at the moment, and some students love it while others find it a bit tedious, I decided I wanted to take some of that criticism and frustration on board and created a literary challenge for the students where they had to produce a stunt presentation under time pressure.
Stunt Presentation
Every student had two lessons to prepare a stunt presentation on one of their favorite reads. They could choose the way they wanted to present it. Here are some ideas I gave them:
a reading
a glog
a blog entry
a powerpoint
a poster
a dramatization
a stand-up
a a photo story
a drawing
a diorama
a poem
a painting
a multimedia presentation
a song
After one and half hour of intense work among most of my students (some struggled with their creative inspiration) they were ready to present. Some students had made ordinary posters (among them Wolf Brother, while other had made Google Presentations (for easy sharing and swift transitions) or glogs. I have permission to display this one for instance on Before I die. One student even made a quiz using Google Forms. She had chosen the Harry Potter-series and explained them briefly before she went on to engage her fellow students in an interactive quiz on the Smartboard. Very popular indeed!
Learning Outcome
In terms of language all students got to use their oral skills in their presentation, but also their written English in presentations, posters, glogs or other products presented. They also had to use literary terminology when they had to convey to their fellow students why they liked their book of choice, and they also used their digital competence.
Students expressed afterwards that they enjoyed the four lessons as it was creative, fun and they learned about 20 other books they either hadn’t or heard about before the presentations.
One of the students presented a glog on the Young Warrior-series where the student taught students some Japanese phrases and then a glog on 13 reasons why which really challenged the students as the topic of the book is suicide. What is appropriate literature for teenagers? Luckily I have planned a topic later this semester on Teen Literature – that can get interesting.
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