Lower Intermediate to Intermediate Learners
CEFR: A2 to B1
Magazine Writing
A group project that teaches and practices article writing. This project can be used at any level from A2 upwards. Students write about any topics of their own choice. Peer feedback contributes to good quality and interesting topics.
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Find more recent examples of magazines here.
Bookmaking
Books and booklets are a wonderful format for lots of topics and projects. The idea is based on the “Didaktik des weißen Blattes”. Instead of worksheets the students are given empty booklets that they have to fill at their own discretion. The learners decide themselves what information to include and how to present it in these booklets. These projects are ideal to practice a variety of text-types. Depending on the situation teachers might give no instructions or tips at all or might give some guidelines concerning content and format(s). The Middle Ages and Tall Tales booklets show a mix of autonomous work and teacher assignments. What all these projects have in common is the learners’ pride and feeling of accomplishment when they hand in their finished masterpieces.
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Stories and Storybooks
Writing creative stories can be real fun, especially if the stories will actually be read and appreciated by others. The following activities and projects have worked well with my students.
- The spooky story project: A project that teaches the past progressive tense to describe the setting and circumstances.
- Christmas Stories: Writing, illustrating and voice-recording Christmas stories.
- What makes a good story? Awareness raising activity
- Planning your stories (in groups)
- What makes a good spooky story? (giving peer feedback and revising a story)
- Vocabulary enrichment game: Make your story really spooky
- Story writing impulses (Tips for teachers, how to create plausible characters, colorful settings etc.)
- Button Characters: using buttons to create plausible, life-like characters
- Story openings (4 cool story openings for students to finish)
- Running dictation: Describing the scene
- Origami Storybooks: A very simple but impressive looking way to “publish” young learners’ stories.
- Choose your own adventure stories: A reading-writing project
Diaries
Oliver Twist Diaries: After working on the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the lower classes in Britain, we watched the movie “Oliver Twist” in class. The learners were given old-looking diaries (i.e. empty booklets consisting of 3 sheets of white paper and one cover-sheet that had been stained with black tea and/or coffee before).
At interesting and moving moments we stopped the film and the learners were asked to write Oliver’s diary after this specific experience. The learners had between 5 and 10 minutes to write about a specific day or experience while it was still fresh on their minds and the new vocabulary from the movie was still ringing in their ears. Some learners used the Oliver Twist diaries in class and wrote the diary entries directly into these booklets. Others used their own sheets and then revised and typed their texts at home.
Have a look at the instructions for the students and the finished Oliver Twist diaries.
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Another colorful Diary project: Secret Thoughts of Modern Art
Click on the image to read the book. Tip: Also click on the audio symbols to listen to authentic, spontaneous dialogs of the learners.
Writing Travel Brochures
A group project: Writing perfect travel brochures to fun destinations.
Here you’ll find a collection of writing examples from years 3-4 in middle school.
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