Daniel has taught English for over fifteen years in the UK, Japan and Spain, and has experience in materials and course development. He currently works as a teacher and coordinator for the British Council in Madrid, and authoring a new teens course for Cambridge University Press.
So you have a great project in mind, one that you think will go down well with your teenage students. The question to ask yourself now is: how do I set the project up and oversee it to ensure the students get the most out of it, not only in terms of strengthening their English but also in terms of developing their ability to collaborate?
In this second of four posts on the topic of collaborative project work with teens, we’re going to look at some answers to that question, focussing on two projects in particular: conducting class surveys and writing and recording pilot episodes of new series.
A key element in ensuring the success of any project is that students know from the outset exactly what is expected of them. What are you asking them to do? Give a presentation, write a report, create a comic strip, make an infographic or even, as we saw in the previous post, build a tower?
As far as possible, you should always give your students a model of what they are expected to achieve. This can be an example from the real world, one from a coursebook, or even an example of previous students’ work.
Imagine, for instance, you’ve decided to ask your students to conduct a class survey to find out about the use of social media sites amongst students at your school. The information they gather will be presented as an infographic.
Before starting the project, you need to show your students examples of infographics, drawing attention to their key features (clear visuals, easy-to-digest information, a simple but creative design and a ‘story’ that leads the reader through the information in the appropriate order). Students will then know what they are working towards and will be able to refer to these models as they create their own.
The project
Students:
- decide what they want to find out and write questions accordingly
- conduct interviews (of their classmates or students from other classes)
- compile the responses and work out what they have learned
- decide how they are going to present their findings on the infographic
- draft their infographic, which the teacher checks and feeds back on
- create their final infographic, which could be put up as a poster in class or even designed as a real infographic for a class blog
If, during all these stages, the students have models of infographics that they can refer to, it will help ensure that they constantly work towards an appropriate infographic of their own. A second key element in successful collaborative work is planning and assigning tasks and responsibilities. Let’s look at that in the context of a project that really engages teens: writing and recording pilot episodes of new series. In this scenario, groups are vying for funding to have their full series produced. They therefore have to make the very best pilot episodes they can. (Note that these pilot episodes are audio-recorded only: recording videos is an alternative, but will need more equipment and time, and will likely require parental consent).
Sound effects
The episodes themselves need to include not only narration and dialogue but also sound effects, such as creaking doors, the sound of footsteps in the grass, traffic noises or the sound of rain, and – one that is often popular – an explosion. Students first plan the story together and then write individual scenes in pairs.
Later on each pair is responsible for one sound effect – both working out how to create it and actually making it happen (emptying rice onto a tray works for rain, by the way, but I’ll leave it to the creativity of your students to come up with more ideas!). This ensures everyone is working and nobody is left idle, which can easily happen if certain students start to dominate. In the actual recording students take on different roles.
To ensure nobody is left out at this stage either, make sure that each group writes an episode that includes at least as many characters as there are members of the group. A recording of about 3 minutes with between 5 and 9 scenes will probably be more than enough to keep everyone busy for several hours. It also helps for groups to nominate a time-keeper. This person is responsible (with some teacher oversight) for ensuring everyone is keeping on track. This in itself is a very useful life skill.
Listen and judge
Once every group has finished recording, you can listen to them as a class and have groups feedback on each other’s work before voting on the winner. Knowing their classmates will be listening and judging their work is an added incentive for the groups to do well. And who knows – you might even inspire some future Netflix prodigies!
Of course, if you want students to collaborate as much as possible in English, you need to provide them with the language they need to do so. This means not only the language related to the project, such as social media for the surveys, but the language needed to collaborate. Here are some examples of language you can input to equip students for a range of collaboration subskills:
Brainstorming
- I know!
- Why don’t we… ? / How about… ?
- I’ve got a good idea!
- I think… would be better because…
- That’s a good idea, but…
Decision-making
- Yuki, what do you think?
- Mario, would you like to say something?
- Does anyone have any other ideas?
- OK, do we all agree?
- Shall we vote?
Giving feedback
- I/We really liked how you…
- I/We thought … was very good.
- Can you explain why you… ?
- Next time, why don’t you… ?
- Next time, how about… -ing… ?
So there you have it: two new projects to try out with your own students. I encourage you to give them both a go, but not before reading the next in this series of blog posts, which will consider some potential problems that can arise with project work and look at ways to overcome them.
If you missed the first blog in the series, catch up on it to read about the benefits of collaborative project work.