Does anyone have any good alternatives to presentations as a final project for a unit?
Stuff I have done in the past
1. kids making polls
2. kids making board games
3. expert group choice (kids make x and then everyone shares and decides. Stuff like fusions goods, travel itineraries, etc.)
4. Various takes on stuck on an island
5. I want to try a thing where a kids make internet quiz but its rather involved and have not simplified it enough.
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Does anyone have anything they have done that has worked particularly well? I am not against presentations just feel it gets overdone here.
5 comments
Do your kids have tablets?
I had my kids make presentations – but instead of presenting in front of the class they made it a video presentation using the options available for video presentations in PowerPoint.
Adding video / gifs and animation. Some of the students really seemed to enjoy it.
Have you varied the types of presentations?
I.e. Powerpoint, posters, interview/role-play… lots of ways to mix things up.
I would also second u/Danstucal81 idea. Depending on the level of the kids you can also have them make more advanced videos on iPads / smartphones (though this requires a good bit of skill.)
I’ve also seen teachers have kids make radio/TV shows as another form of presentation.
I made them do a poster presentation, you know, like in universities. just give them an issue, ask them to put causes, effects an solutions on it.
A little hard to say without some context for the unit/level, but some things I’ve done/seen:
-Travel plan (with some light budgeting/choosing different locations, can add a directions-giving component)
-Local festival research with the purpose of creating documents that your local gov’t could use to help English speakers understand their history/traditions
-Having kids make a survey about a question for local English speakers (or about their school for their fellow classmates) – Google Forms is good about that
-Writing recipes (either researching Japanese/local recipes to put into English, or else researching recipes relevant to a particular country/region/culture and having students provide information about that)
-As for an “internet quiz”, maybe creating some sort of “choose-your-own-adventure” with a slideshow
One year we did commercials. Students designed a product, drew a poster advertisement, wrote a script, and after it was checked for content and grammar, they memorized their scripts and recorded a commercial. Then we played the commercials for the class.