projects class ideas?

[Glenski]

I was recently told what one of my classes will be this year, and it's one that I dread. OCC Projects.

It an elective class for third year HS students, and it always has 30-40 students per class that meet twice a week.

As with all 3rd yr students' classes, it only runs from April to December, but student motivation is zero after August. It is also very low at two other times of the year due to other major school events that they take part in.

Projects class is fairly open to interpretation by the teachers. A native English speaker co-teaches with a Japanese teacher (usually an inexperienced newbie, and this year is no exception). The projects are meant to combine the students' full knowledge of English to perform...uh...projects using writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills.

Let's not fool ourselves. Their ability in all of these areas is very weak. We usually try to get small groups to make TV commercials (2-3 minutes long), or tell storyboard picture stories (like manga), but other previous projects have been pretty lame (small talk dialogs, and compliment dialogs).

Assignments are lost, or kept by only one student who often is absent, and the students rarely ask questions in English (because they can't). If they choose to use dictionaries to use appropriate or high level English for their situations, the words are usually over the heads of the rest of the class, so trying to focus them on using what they already know is a chore. Some students think this class should be an eikaiwa class, but it is NOT. Many are disappointed in it because it winds up being a drama or acting class, which many hate.

Most projects take 2-3 classes to create and 2-3 to present, which bores many students. A previous teacher tried simply reintroducing various grammar points to the students as buildup lessons for a project. This had limited success.

Considering the low motivation and weak language skills, and the fact that there are a lot of kids to grade, even if they work in pairs or triads, does anyone have suggestions for projects?

(As you can guess, classes begin early April, so I'm scrambling to find a couple of good lesson plans just to give myself some breathing room.)

[Lorikeet]

Just musing about some projects that have been done at our school--what comes to mind are bulletin boards, calendars, and literary magazines (well not really a magazine--more like a pamphlet I think.) Students planned them, contributed material, and had something to show at the end. I think the calendar had poetry and artwork. I think one class did a cookbook too. Anyway, not sure if it would be suitable for you.

[debskirkby]

A school magazine (pamphlet) sounds like a great idea! We did that at our school too and each class contributed a page! I guess the class could be divided in groups and they could all have a job, music page, food page, interview page etc.

They could do a biography of someone famous in Japan, that might motivate them more.

Is there any community involvement they could do and report on?

Surveys might be interesting too, interview your fellow students about certain topics and write about your findings. Would have to be basic questions I know...I have the same bunch down here in Kobe sounds like!!

Hope to have helped!

[Sally Olsen]

Just finished the school year with the grade 11's who are 15 and 16 years old and am so pleased with their portfolio's that I thought I would add to this thread. They were to do 12 topics and could choose anything and I got a wide variety of things I would never think to choose from tatoos, piercing, fashion, body building, Tae Kwon Do, handball, Shakespeare, reporting on the teaching they did for the younger English classes, their work experience, letters and pictures from their Japanese epals, reports on many different countries, to various bands, movie stars and movies. They went to the computer room or the Service Center in the library and spent about 2 periods of 90 minutes finding materials, with a picture and lyrics to a song if it was about a musician or band. They then came back to the classroom to read and discuss and figure out the vocabulary and rewrote it in their own words. They had to make up some kind of worksheet for others to do and that could be a puzzle, a word find, a open-ended question sheet, a poster, cloze exercise, test of facts, etc. They presented these to another group, not the whole class. They always made enough copies each person to have their own. They put all of these in a binder and the second to last class I asked the principal, their former English teachers and their homeroom teacher to class and they told about their favourite project in small groups. One girl asked to tell the whole class and she did a great job. Then they showed the Danish censor all their work and discussed one of the projects with him for their oral exam. They have given me the portfolios to copy but want them to keep. BTW I did get in a huge amount of trouble because of the cost of the pictures on the colour printers and the cost of making the Table of Contents (they got smaller pictures for their 12 subjects some of which they took themselves) in colour but you could avoid that by having them do it in black and white. Now the school has 38 books in English with 12 subjects that will interest other teenagers no doubt. We did not have a single English book in the library. Not only that but I expect the portfolios of the next year's class to be better because they have seen an example of what can be done. Of course, it is a lot of going and coming to the computers because they are finished at different times and you have to find two groups who have finished so they can talk together but they can always start on their next project until a group has finished. It was great to show for parent interviews too. We did put the posters in the bulletin board as you suggested. I would like to try the calendar and am going to do the school magazine in this last month.