Useful Tip: Working on one activity per month is ideal, however, if your students need more time to complete a task, allow this and reduce the number of project activities. The quality of the materials produced is what matters the most.
CommunicationStart a Reading Club!
Students are teamed up in mixed nationality groups (no more than ten groups in total, so that teachers can supervise all of them effectively). A forum is created for each group, where students meet online to get to know each other and collaborate. Each one of the groups chooses a name for their book club, decides how often they will meet online, nominates someone to be in charge of the book club, creates a logo and selects a book from the reading list that every member of the book club should read. All groups announce the opening of their book club by creating a short trailer that includes all the above information.
Example tool: Animoto
Keeping our Book Club’s Journal
The first month of the project will be dedicated to book reading, but it is also the ideal time for communication and team building among group members. For this reason, each one of the mixed nationality book clubs should create and keep their own journal to keep up to date as they read their books. In this journal, the members of each team can write down their thoughts and impressions, record their reactions and emotions, connection with the characters, write about or draw their favourite scenes and share their favourite quotes.
Example tool: Google Docs
Illustrated timeline of the author’s life and diary entries
Younger students from partner schools create illustrations based on the timeline of the author’s life that they receive from their teachers. Older students pretend they are the author themselves and write diary entries for each of the key events in their life.
Example tool: Timetoast
Book covers
Students read the blurb at the back cover of the book and redesign the front cover. All book covers are displayed on Twinspace.
Example tool: Twiddla
Bio poems and portraits
Students write bio poems, which are poems that are written to describe a person, usually a fictional character or famous person and follow a specific pattern (biopoems worksheet). Learners will also draw sketches of each of the characters of the book. A poetry collection eBook which includes the students’ poems is created and illustrated by the students. Younger students can draw portraits of the main characters of the book or make 3D models of them.
Example tool: Flipsnack
Book mobiles and book mind maps
Younger students create a mobile - a decorative structure that is suspended to turn freely in the air (Wikihow make a mobile) - using the following four story elements:
- setting
- character
- plot
- theme
They can then display their mobiles in their classroom or elsewhere in the school. Older students create interactive mind maps containing the most important elements of the book they have read focusing on:
- author
- theme
- setting
- main characters
- most important events
- rating of the book
- anything else of interest
Example tool: Mindmup
Breaking news
For this activity, students will be acting as newspaper reporters. They will write an article describing the most important event from their book for the front page of a newspaper. Students can choose the name of the newspaper they work for, create the front page and publish their articles.
Example tool: Fodey
Comic books: Bringing our books to life!
Students turn the book or part of the book they have read into a comic strip. They have to work together to choose the key scenes, the appropriate landscapes and compose the dialogue for the main characters.
Example tools: Storyboardthat and Makebeliefscomix
