Photocopy-free projects that work in class

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Photocopy-free projects that work in class

• Jon Wright
• Jon.wright_at_live.co.uk

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What is a project?

• Student-centred
• Has an end-product

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Advantages

• Multi-level
• Exploited in various ways
• Develop all 4 skills
• Creates opportunities for Ss to contribute
• Collaborative process, and Ss take responsibility
• Stimulating break from routine
• Fried-Booth, D. 2002. Project Work. Oxford OUP
• Teaches language and content
• Beckett, G. and Slater, T. 2005. The project
  framework a tool for language, content, and
  skills integration. ELTJ 59/2 108 116.

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Example project areas

• Media (make school magazine, radio programme,
  newspaper, etc)
• Culture (only mugs do drugs, holidays and
  festivals, how green are you, etc)
• Trips (plan a trip, zoo visit, etc)
• Local (wheelchair guide, food and drink labels
  worldwide, visit your teachers house, etc)
• Classroom (dub a video clip, quiz contest, famous
  foreign cities, etc)

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Other (mainstream) projects

• Concordancing
• Webquests
• School email exchanges
• Presentations
• Drama
• Team teaching
• Organising events
• Out of class interviews

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But ...

• Time-consuming
• Often not valued by students little awareness
  of learning goals
• (fewer than one fifth of the 73
  participants enjoyed ... or were in favour of
• project-based instruction Beckett and
  Slater 2005 109)
• Teachers are unsure of their roles and
  responsibilities or overwhelmed
• ( a high level of pre-planning and
  co-ordination Carter, G. and Thomas, H. 1986.
• Dear Brown Eyes Experiential learning
  in a project-oriented approach, ELTJ 40/3
• 196-204)
• The language level can be undemanding

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And ...

• Not all participate equally
• How to fit them in busy timetables?
• Loss of interest
• Problem solving can become problem avoiding
• Parallel groupwork means not all benefit from all
• Plus it could call into question the methodology
  used to present the language the project
  recycles/extends

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Mini projects 1

• Stage 1
• In groups, think of the problems I have solved
  so far today.
• Find 9 examples.

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Problem solving

• Stage 2
• Report/share (to the whole class/to a
  neighbouring group).

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Problem solving

• Stage 3
• Rephrase the same facts, but present in a
  different style.

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Problem solving

• Stage 4
• Which version is more interesting, normal,
  useful, etc?

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Project management

• Identify the benefit
• Start to produce what will satisfy the need
• Enjoy the benefits
• Identify the benefit of this
• Learn a list of 20 words/phrases chosen in the
  group.

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List of 20 things

• You have 5 minutes to think of the list, and
  learn them.
• Check each person in the group can remember all
  20.
• How did you do? What memory techniques helped?

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Memory project

• Conversation club (30 mins weekly)
• Week 1
• Tell me 3 things about yesterday
• Week 2
• Tell me 10 things about yesterday
• Next week Im going to ask you to tell me 20
  things about yesterday

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Something about me

• Stage 1
• Choose who will start, who is second, etc
• The first person has 1 minute to say 4 things
  about themselves.
• Feel free to ask person 1 any questions you like
  after their mini presentation.

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Something about me, too

• Stage 2
• The group recalls what person 1 said.
• Person 2 has 1 minute to say 4 things about
• themselves, but not on the same topics or using
• the same verbs as person 1.

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Something about me

• And so on ...
• Variants for later speakers
• Make comparisons between yourself and all
  previous speakers
• (Remember what ... said about ...? Well, I ...)
• Include references to topics you know the others
  like
• Talk about the future
• etc

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Vocab brainstorm

• Stage 1
• Choose/elicit a topic to review/present
• Prompt/elicit from different groups the related
  elements of the central topic.

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Vocab brainstorm

• Stage 2
• Quick group recap of all the suggested vocab.

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Vocab brainstorm

• Stage 3
• Now put it all together.

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Mini projects

• Within a lesson
• Summarise what weve done so far.
• What mistakes have been corrected?
• What new language has been covered?
• Who has said what?
• Evaluate the usefulness of the input so far.
• Say what you didnt know before.

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Mini projects

• Across a series of lessons
• A story in the news
• Something about me
• Country/culture/topic profile
• Something I saw that surprised me
• A song Id like you to listen to
• A book/story/film that impressed me
• Recipe of the week

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The advantages of photocopy-free work

• No competing demands (were not doing exercise 3)
• No hiding behind paper
• Role of listening
• Flexibility
• Student-centred
• Role of memory

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Professional skills

• Problem solving
• Memory training
• Listening to others
• Working in a team
• Active participation
• Keenness to learn