Last update August 31, 1997. If you have ideas you would like to share, send them via email.
I would like to thank my colleages in the New York City public school system and around the world whose willingness to share ideas gave me the inspiration to start this project.
Send comments or lesson ideas to Jakajk@aol.com
You can save this page now for future reference. More to come!
The Community Design Project is a cooperative activity where students, working in pairs, create a model of a neighborhood. It takes about a week of class time (about five hours). This project is a good to use after students have studied topics related to neighborhoods, houses, stores, giving directions, etc....
There are several writing assignments that require using a variety of tenses. This activity allows students to use English in a natural context. Students engage in real conversation while negotiating the model construction process with their partners and the teacher. The project is a lot of fun. Putting all the projects together when the students finish makes an impressive display that looks like a miniature city.
Materials that are needed include:
Introduce the concept of models and their use in science, architecture, urban planning, advertising, museums, film, and hobby craft. If possible, show the students pictures of examples from various fields. Demonstrate putting together the house or store model so students have an idea of how to begin. Have the students draw a plan before they begin working with materials.
It is good to set certain minimum requirements for a community model. It should include at least two intersecting streets, six stores, several houses, and a public area like a park, parking lot, etc....
Prior to handing out materials, firmly establish rules for working in pairs. Some of my rules for students include:
Activities include:
Before, during, and after the project assign the writing of paragraphs or short essays. These can form a small portfolio about the project which can be bound with construction paper. (See book making procedure below in "A Book About Me"for list of book making materials)
Specific writing assignments that can be given are:
I always enjoy having my students do this activity. Once they get the idea, they become very inventive. They create some very realistic looking objects for inclusion in their models: tiny street lights, swans, benches, basketball courts, handball courts, flowers, and more. I never know what to expect.
The atmosphere of the class is very relaxed. I have the chance to engage students in extended conversation. Normally shy students speak more freely, and new friendships are formed.
I have a confession to make. I like natural disasters! (At least the ones that do not affect me directly.) Every year one or two disasters happen, and it seems like nature is delivering lesson plans to my door. The tabloid press and television news are full of dramatic photos and footage. Students enter the class asking me if I heard about what happened. Usually, I have not only heard about it, but have also made it the subject of a lesson or two.
Recently, Puerto Rico had a very bad hurricane. The events where well documented with large photos in all the local newspapers. I bought a few papers and used these photos to motivate a student generated description of events. All the students had heard about the hurricane , and they were eager to contribute to the discussion.
After introducing vocabulary, I taped the photos to the board and had students contribute to creation of a text to accompany the pictures. I wrote the descriptions "as given" by the students including their errors. We then proofread the description, correcting errors, adjusting the tenses, and rearranging the composition. The text we create was used for choral and individual reading, cloze exercises, vocabulary development, and question formation. Students wrote about natural disasters they had experienced in their own lives. Many have first hand experience with floods, blizzards, monsoons, etc.... And they are eager to relate their stories.
Below is the end result of the text a level 2 class made on hurricane that hit Puerto Rico in September, 1996.
Hurricanes are natural disasters. Hurricanes are very destructive storms with a lot of rain, and very powerful wind. The winds blow faster than 74 miles per hour. These storms are very dangerous. They destroy buildings, break trees, and cause floods.
On Tuesday, a hurricane hit the island of Puerto Rico. Floods of water destroyed houses. Some people drowned in the flood water. Business was disrupted , and people could not buy food or travel.
Many people were hurt. Eight people died. Two people were buried in a mud slide. Others drowned in the flood water. One woman had a heart attack. She could not travel to the hospital. She died.
After the hurricane was finished, the streets were like rivers. Eighteen inches of rain had fallen. Now people outside of Puerto Rico will send help to the Puerto Rican people. They will send clothes, food, medicine, and other supplies . Doctors, nurses, and volunteers will go to Puerto Rico to help repair the damage caused by the storm.
Very often, for high school ESL students, their English as a Second Language classes are the only courses they take that come close in content to the teaching of Language Arts. This leaves ESL teachers with the double responsibility of teaching a language, and teaching the basic skills that normally fall upon Native Language Arts or Language Arts teachers.
One of the most essential abilities a student needs to leave high school with is the ability to organize and write a research paper. Writing a research paper is a complex process involving multiple skills. Selecting a manageable topic, locating source material in the library, searching a data base, making notes from sources, writing the essay, documenting references are just some of the skills needed. Teaching students what they need to know can take several weeks. Perhaps I should say that it can take years. (I strongly believe ESL teachers should begin to teach many of the skills needed very early in the language development process.)
The two lessons below are for advanced students. I have found the lessons to be useful as part of the larger process of teaching advanced students how to produce a good research paper.
Students often don't know what a good research paper looks like. How are the notes taken from source material integrated into an essay? What is the function of footnotes and a bibliography? Where did the quotes and paraphrases originate? What does a finished research paper look like?
To give students an idea of what will be expected of them, I prepare a very short research paper that contains all the elements you would expect in one. I base the footnotes and bibliography on a book or magazine, or both, that the entire class has access to. After reading and discussing the paper, I then ask the students to locate the information provided by the footnotes and bibliography in the original source material. It is important to explain that footnotes and bibliographies are pointers to more information that interested scholars can use, and that they are not required by professors in order to torture students. This experience provides students with a good model of what a research paper is.
The mini-research paper is an in-class exercise to familiarize students with some aspects of writing the research paper. It should be taught prior to any independent undertaking on the part of your students, and it can also be done for reinforcement after students have undertaken independent projects. It is an exercise you should do with your class several times. First, as a teacher lead activity, then as pair work, and finally with students working individually.
In all cases the teacher chooses a topic. One good topic for this exercise is the climate of a country. The teacher provides the students with copies of two different source materials. One source can be an entry from an encyclopedia for children on the country with several subheadings (population, climate, etc....) The other source can be a selection from a book on the country dealing with the topic, and written at the appropriate reading level for your students. Both readings should be brief. The purpose of two sources is to require the students synthesize the notes they gather when writing the essay.
In the first teacher guided lesson, take the students through the steps one would go through after having decided on a topic, and having gathered source material. :
As a follow up to the first lesson, have the students delineate the steps to process the class went through. Then repeat the lesson several times, each time requiring more and more independence. Their essays should be no more than a page long, but it should include all the elements one expects to find in a normal research paper. Your students should write several mini-research papers before you have them begin working on the BIG research paper.
The first time I taught a writing class, I quickly grew tired of the anemic descriptions that I got from many students. I got descriptions like: There are a lot of nice things you can do there. It is very beautiful. You can swim, etc....
If you want your students to produce a rich description of a place, try this exercise in guided writing. Have your students imagine a place they are very fond of. It can be a place they go to relax, or to enjoy themselves. Once they all have a place in mind, ask the following questions and have them respond freely in writing. It is best not to hurry through this exercise. Give your students time to meditate on their responses.
These are just some of many questions you can ask during this exercise. The exercise can also be adapted for descriptions people, or for responding to literature. You ask the questions. The students respond in writing. Their responses form the basis for essays that have more energy, and more vivid detail.
A Book About Me is a project that can be undertaken toward the end of the semester. It allows students to relate specific topics covered throughout the semester to their own lives. It can be worked on over the course of one or two weeks as part of review lessons for the final exam.
Students draw illustrations, cut out magazine pictures, bring in photos, or even some combination of the all the above. These are then written about. The text and illustrations can be mounted on construction paper or laid out on looseleaf.
To familiarize the class with the idea of creating a book, it is a good idea to start with a smaller project I call, The Class Book, where each student designs one page with an illustration and text on any subject they like. The teacher uses the pages to demonstrate the binding together process. The students then have an example book to work from, and they understand the process enough to work more independently.
Materials that are needed include:
I have been able to obtain these materials cheaply by shopping around in 99 cents stores. Also, people often throw away neatly tied bundles of magazines and catalogs. If you are not too proud you can pick up stacks of magazines for free on recycling day.
Below are some suggestions for topics with page references for vocabulary from The New Oxford Picture Dictionary .
Games are an excellent way to review grammar and vocabulary. I have had a lot of success with the following games. They energize the classroom and relieve a lot of tension. Students of all ages love them.
All you need for this game is a chalkboard, and a list of vocabulary. Draw a nine square grid on the board and fill each box with one word. Divide the class in half, and designate one half as -x- and the other half as -o-. The students on each team collaborate in coming up with grammatical sentences using the vocabulary. When they use a word in a correct sentence, mark either x or o over the word. Three in a row wins! I used this game to review general vocabulary, parts of speech, and verb forms. It can be played for an hour without the students seeming to tire.
This is a simple game that requires students to generate vocabulary in English. The class is asked to imagine that they are going on a picnic. Their job is to suggest things to bring along. The teacher says yes or no to each suggestion. What the students do not know is that the teacher says yes when a student suggests something whose first letter is the same as the first letter of the name of the student. The teacher says no if the first letter of the suggested object and the first letter of the name of the student do not match. For example:
If students need a hint after a while you can interject something like:
Usually someone figures out the game. Knowing the secret forces them to narrow their suggestions to words beginning with the same letter as their name.
For this game you need to prepare a list of about twenty sentences. Make roughly half the sentences grammatical, and the rest ungrammatical. Give the students a few minutes to read and discuss which sentences are correct. It is good to assign partners to discuss which sentences are grammatical. They can then bid on the sentences that they think are good. You get to play the auctioneer. Students love it if you play the role to the hilt, and do not forget to slam the gavel! Sentences can be draw from student writings, common errors, etc.... This game forces students to use dollar amounts, and to focus on the fine points of grammar.
This is a simple vocabulary game that can be played with two levels of difficulty depending on the level of your students. In the easy version, draw five columns on a chalk board. Assign each column a letter from the alphabet and shout Go! The first student to fill in all the columns with a word that begins with the letter of each column shouts, STOP! My high school students like to accumulate extra exam points with this game. You can go through the whole alphabet like this and also use common two letter word beginnings like ex, sh, sp, ch, etc....
In the more difficult version, assign each of the five columns a general catergory like food, clothing, emotions, office items, things in the house, etc.... You then call out a letter from the alphabet. Students have to fill each column with a vocabulary word that begins with the letter and pertains to the category.
Many illustrated books for children, though not all, lend themselves to being used as motivators for generating narrative stories. When selecting books to use in class, look for books whose story you can narrate to yourself by reading the illustrations without looking at the words in the text. Many books are beautifully illustrated and suitable for many age/ablility levels.
With a book whose storyline is understandable from the illustrations, one can ask the class questions in ways that allow the story to unfold. Be sure introduce relevent vocabulary. Then allow the students to describe the story. Write the description the students give you on a chalkboard. The way the students tell the story becomes the text from which all the usual exercises that one normally does with text can be generated.
Below is a comparison of the actual text from the book, TIME TRAIN, by Paul Fleishman, (Harper Collins, 1991) with the text generated by beginning level high school students through questioning. The text created by the responses of the students to the illustrations is much richer in description, and it draws upon the previously learned language of the students.
Dinner that evening was very, very good.
In the morning, the weather was warm.
In the afternoon, we got off at our stop. The train ride was over.
There was no hotel. So we slept outside.
In the morning, we saw the first dinosaur.
The students are eating dinner. The cook is bringing an elephant leg to the table. There are forks, plates, spoons, knives, and flowers on the table.
The students and the teacher says, What is this?
There are three insects on the train. The insects are called dragon flies. The man is giving out juice. The dragon flies are big. They are long. The students and the teacher get off the train. They are in the forest. They see trees, birds, and bushes. The students are sleeping in a big footprint. It must be a dinosaur footprint.
The students went back in time.
The students went into the past. The dinosaur is big. It has a long tail. The dinosaur takes a suitcase. The teacher is running after the dinosaur. The dinosaur takes big steps.
The dinosaur is eating the suitcase. The teacher says, Stop it. Give me my suitcase! The clothes fall in the swamp.
I developed this list of questions to use at the beginning of each semester. The questions have helped give me deeper insight into the lives of my students. Even using this survey with one class can change many preconceptions you might have about your students. For beginning and intermediate level students, I provide the questions in their native language if possible. More advanced students enjoy interpreting the questions in groups.
The questions probe a variety of areas including:
(Culture shock refers to the experience of coming to a new country and being unfamiliar with the way people in the new culture behave. Simple things like going to the store to buy something can present problems. At first, everything may seem new and exciting. Later, everything may seem overwhelming and bad. A person can become depressed, and want to return home to their own culture. It can take months or even years to adjust to living in a new country.)
The Survey Questions:Contact:John Korber
