Project #2 A class (library) blog
Level: Vary widely, Intermediate to well above
Circumstances: Students in secondary school, doing 6 hours English a week, with an extensive (though under-used) library of "graded readers"
Classroom time required: None; students do task as homework
Brief outline: Students are required to read a minimum 3 graded readers per term as homework. Once they have read a book, they will post their review on the class blog. Reviews to include title, author, brief plot outline, whether or not they liked it and why (not), links to 2-3 related websites, and an illustration.
Equipment required: None. All children have an Internet connection at home (with PCs also available to them at school).
To find out more about blogs and blogging:
This article on TeachingEnglish.org.uk gives a brief introduction, and you will find more posts on blogging here.
See also the "Quick Tour" at Blogger.com.
Circumstances: Students in secondary school, doing 6 hours English a week, with an extensive (though under-used) library of "graded readers"
Classroom time required: None; students do task as homework
Brief outline: Students are required to read a minimum 3 graded readers per term as homework. Once they have read a book, they will post their review on the class blog. Reviews to include title, author, brief plot outline, whether or not they liked it and why (not), links to 2-3 related websites, and an illustration.
Equipment required: None. All children have an Internet connection at home (with PCs also available to them at school).
To find out more about blogs and blogging:
This article on TeachingEnglish.org.uk gives a brief introduction, and you will find more posts on blogging here.
See also the "Quick Tour" at Blogger.com.
Labels: Blogging, Project work, Reading activities
posted by Tom at 1:34 PM
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3 Comments:
Comments from the session:
Pros
-Students read and write something
-Students do task in own time
Cons
-Not an interesting activity
-Might cheat, copy others
-Not interactive
-No speaking
Further comments from Tom:
Personally I like this project a lot.
Getting kids to read can be tough, particularly in a foreign language, and I think seeing the library blog grow, and contributing to it, might motivate them to read: they might
want to read because they want to be able to write about it.
If we ensure that they comment on the blog, the task becomes "interactive" and maybe we should introduce some classtime -- possibly in the form of presentations.
The kids bring the books back to the library on Fridays...? Get them to explain to their classmates why they liked/didn't like the book...
Get them to sell the book they have just read to their classmates...
We like the idea because using the internet to submit their homework can be attractive in a futuristic sort of way.
The downsides are that the students can easily cheat and copy from texts already on the internet
Students copying stuff from the Web is always going to be a problem...
But it's so obvious that they've done so...
The turns of phrase they include, the fact that it's word perfect...
Trying pasting 10 words or so of what "they've" produced, between quotes, into Google-is-Evil, and you can probably find the page they copied it from.
For project work, I always specify that copying from the web means a "fail"...
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