Closed Captioning
Writing Subtitles or CCs for a short video can be a great way for students to pay more attention to sentence structure, including identifying phrases and clauses. It may also be good for vocab exposure.
Student Projects
Project Type: Media
Deconstructing a Video Essay
Writing essays isn’t always fun, but with many learners (especially kids and teenagers) watching lots of YouTube videos these days, chances are they watch plenty of video essays. For this project, they’ll deconstruct a few to see how essays can be done in a more interesting way.
Storyboarding
Students create an outline of a story they know well. But instead of just words accompanied by bullet points, they’ll have more of a visual component to it and show the flow of progression.
Advice Videos
Let your students consider: What is something you wish you knew a couple years ago? What’s something you’d like to tell your younger self? While reviewing a few grammar points, students can prepare a short video in which they give advice to younger students.
Class Newspaper
Writing for a school newspaper on a monthly basis can encourage students to write about things they’re interested in, can foster collaboration, and can help students practice writing in different styles.
Movie Mania
Suppose there’s a new film coming out soon that many of your students are excited about. You can take that opportunity to give them some assignments they’ll enjoy. Different assignments will require different skills as we work both before and after the film’s release.
Student Blogging
A great way to engage students is to create projects within contexts and formats that they are already using in their personal lives. One of my favorite ways of doing this is through blogs.