The last two weeks of class will be time to review, take post-tests, and work on class "projects."

Projects

The projects can be very, very small (each student writes a sentence) or much grander (students create a class newspaper), but they should involve meaningful content. The goal is to have students communicate something in English that (a) has meaning to them and (b) can be shared with others outside the class. Ideally, the process of working on the project will create a situation where students stretch their English use and are motivated to express themselves in new ways. With students' permission, we'll post their written work on the website and/or compile them into a portfolio (I'll bring permission forms to class).

The goal is *not* to create extra work for you! This can be a very simple activity that you would naturally do as a part of class. It can be a collaboration among partners, small groups, or the entire class; or it can be individual students' work. Also, students don't have to do 2 different projects for each night that they're in class; please check with the tutors who teach your class on the other night to make sure you're not duplicating each other.

Simple project ideas for beginning classes:

• Group Story - Students are given a topic (a shared class event, a picture suggesting a storyline, etc) and asked to give a description. Teacher writes their story on the board as they dictate, reinforcing the connection between the spoken and the written word. Teacher later copies the story, which can be distributed in a later class and used for reading and vocabulary exercises. (This is also called "LEA" - Language Experience Approach)
  • See Picture Stories for Health Literacy for explanation of LEA and picture stories which would be appropriate for this activity
• Captions - Students are given a series of pictures for which they write captions. Comic strips are a good candidate; try those with no words like Ferd'nand or those whose captions can be easily removed, like Marmaduke.

High Beginner to Intermediate:

• Cinquain Poems - Students write a structured 5 line poem

• Persona Poems - Students write a structured poem describing themselves

More complex (but not necessarily more advanced) project ideas:

• Resumes - Students work on writing their resume
• Family Trees - Students create a family tree with brief captions to describe various family members
• Letters to Congress - Students express their views on a political issue (like immigration!)
• Letters to Friends - Students write a letter to friends back home, describing their life in Durham
• Class Cookbook - Create a cookbook with recipes contributed by students and written out in English
  • For example: Try Our Recipes! is an online class project featuring international cuisine
• Community Phone Book - Create a list of important community agencies and their contact information
• ESOL Class Ad - Create an advertisement for ESOL classes; include scheduling and location information and a reason why the class is worth taking
• A Book About Me
• Artifact: A Special Meaning - Students bring an artifact or picture that has special meaning to them to class and present it in English.
• Group Speech: I Have a Dream For My Community - Students read MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and use "I have a dream that..." as a construction to describe their hopes for the community.
• Life Stories Project: "Why I Came To the US" - Students tell their own stories

More ideas:

• More creative writing ideas at Pizzaz.com
• Creative Writing prompts from Boggle's World
• More class project ideas at Civics-On-the-Border
• TOPICS (online magazine for Learners of English): Web-published class projects
• Poetry is Powerful! Class Project

List of the Spring 2006 ESOL Themes

Games

• Agree to Disagree
• Auction for Sentences
• Crazy Stories
• Crazy Word Chains
• Elementary 20 Questions
• Pic Tic Tac Toe
• 2 Truths & A Lie

Collections of Games

• More Games from Dave's ESL Cafe
• Icebreaker games from ESLflow.com
• More games from ESLflow.com
• Internet TESL Journal Games

Board Games

• We have several Scrabble games at Kestrel Heights
• Boggle is also fun (you have to create words from scrambled letters)
• Any other board game or card game played in English!