If I had a lot of time, the possibility to choose any topic I like and also financial support to perform a new-media-project at school, I would either let my students create a travel guide or an online-brochure about a specific country or place, like England, Scotland or Shakespeares’ Globe Theatre.
I believe that this project would be appropriate for ninth-graders who anyway like to spend their free time surfing on the internet and who are familiar with guided research tasks. To elevate the difficulty level at this stage, I would however give them half-guided support in performing their task.
How am I going to proceed?
- Firstly, I will bring along some booklets to class or even show them online versions of such in order to give them an idea of what they are supposed to present at the end of this unit.
- Secondly, my students will either have three topics to choose from or if there are some students who are already very confident in finding appropriate information online without the help of the teacher, I will let them chose a topic by themselves.
- Thirdly, I will present them a list of appropriate sources for each topic which I prepared beforehand, but also announce that I require two additional web sources of each group according to certain criteria.
- Fourthly, I will introduce important criteria on how to differentiate appropriate sources from non-appropriate ones and give them a little task in which they will be presented five sources that either do or do not apply to the presented criteria. Then my students will be supposed to decide whether these sources are appropriate or not. This task will sensitize them for the right use and choice of the internet web sites.
- Afterwards, they will be given some time to collect different information on their individual topics. I believe that it would make more sense to make students work collaboratively on one brochure. On the one hand, they will have the possibility to search information on their own. On the other hand, writing articles needs a great effort and should rather be discussed in groups of three to four students.
- In the meantime, I will set up a blog where students will be required to present their first results and also comment on the work of one another at home.
- In the further lessons I would give my students a short introduction on different topics such as grammar, style, the body and design of a booklet for about 15 minutes each, and give them the rest of the lesson to proceed with their tasks.
- At the end of both the research and the writing unit, the students will be asked to present their booklet via Power Point.
What are THE AIMS of creating booklets?
Actually, students can learn…
- …to use different dictionaries such as the English-English, German-English/ English-German and the Thesaurus Dictionaries
- …to apply specific grammar tools in a natural context, including the use of infinitives with “to”, the linking words or the use of gerund
- …to use the internet and online data bases in an appropriate way
- …to collect and elaborate information which is relevant to what they are supposed to do
- …the use of text and image processing programs
- …to improve their communication skills via working together with two or three partners on one brochure or travel guide
- …to gain proficiency in collaborative and autonomous work
- …to present contents with the use of new media
Since I will introduce different topics on grammar, style and the formal criteria of a booklet at the beginnings of the lesson, it will be no problem to set up a midterm or a final test.
