Wednesday, October 22, 2014

A creative way to present a project!

With a lot of delight and contentment, I do publish one of the many wonderful projects " some"my students implemented after reading a short story by O.Henry. Reading literature can be very motivating for learners, especially if the topic rings bells for them. The story is a love story and this topic is seemingly an everlasting topic that interests teenagers.
The short story, the gift of magi, which is entitled the Christmas present in our textbook has whetted the appetite of , to a great extent most of our students, who are Third Arts students, to read more.
Yet, reading is a habit and if learners are not "pushed" to read, they are  unlikely to have a "spontaneous" tendency to read much. Sometimes, it is crippling for both teachers and students to have successful reading classes, because the majority of our classes are struggling readers, hopelessly .
Well, I do not like to spoil this moment of celebration by bleak thoughts of reality.
Here is what happened, after being involved in pre-reading and while reading activities of the story, students were invented to write a summary of the story and use ICT in their projects. After providing them with various forms of possible outcomes of their projects, while insisting and inspiring them to think creatively. I was very pleased to discover how willing the students were to use ICT and show their talents.
One of these "creative" students is Eya and she proved to be "highly creative" and exceptional. She drew all the pictures by herself and she is one of the few brilliant students who rejoice reading in all the three languages she is studying. Here is her project and I do hope you encourage Eya by leaving your constructive comments for such talents, who use technology wonderfully.
Using literature in the classroom, could possibly help learners improve much and the three days of training we had with Mr.Fitch O'connell were of great support to me.I have been inspired and the training days we had are still having a nice positive impact on my teaching!
        Why are students reluctant to read? A pertinent question ... which needs a lot of reflection...

To end up well, I would like my fellow colleagues to have a look at this site and make use of the lovely collection of literary works, in their classrooms.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/britlit-using-literature-efl-classrooms