“My dream destination …”

When preparing  your students for end-of-school exam you sometimes feel bored with revising, doing listening exercises, drilling grammar and doing multiple choice tests. Don’t worry! Your students feel the same! Therefore, work on something more interesting, more inspiring, more funny. Why not to involve a project work? Here is a mini-project making use of not only vocabulary and grammar structure to revise, but also IT and art skills.

Level: Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate
Aimed at: Teenagers
Aims: Revision of vocabulary concerning means of transport and travelling
Time: +/- 4x45min
What you need: dictionaries, access to the Internet, Bristol board, coloured pencils etc.

Preparations:
Teacher prepares the list of elements being obligatory for the project. For each element students get points relevant to the level of element accomplishment . For example:

On the basis of the table teacher may grade the students according to the school’s grading system.
Aims of the project:
Because students take part in a project at school and they don’t take it home there is a great opportunity to develop social skills between students working in groups, pay attention to good planning skills and responsibility of each group member, making use of school’s equipment (dictionaries, books, albums, computers, maps etc.). Moreover, students revise vocabulary and grammar essential for their communication skills and required for the exam they take at the end of school. The final effect of students’ work are posters showing interesting, sometimes very distant places on Earth, crucial information about those places, very often detailed ones. The posters may be used as a school’s language lab equipment. The project may be considered as multi-disciplinary as it involves: English, geography and IT.
Procedure:

1. Teacher asks the students if there are places that they would like to visit if they had a lot of money and could afford to travel all over the world. Students write their ideas on small pieces of paper and discuss it with a friend sitting nearby.
2. Teacher writes on the board: MY DREAM DESTINATION… and explains that it is the title of the project that students are going to take part in.
3. Teacher gives information about the stages of work:
   1. dividing into groups of 4 (preferably), writing down responsibilities of each group member,
   2. choosing a place to visit,
   3. gives a table of obligatory information that is needed for the project and explains the rules of grading,
   4. each group has access to books, Internet etc.,
   5. gives deadline of project’s presentation.
4. Students have time to work. Teacher may give them extra information and a helping hand by writing on a board what elements may constitute of the high points, for example:
   1. prices of plane tickets, airports, timetable, airlines,
   2. name of hotels, room information, menu,
   3. cuisine,
   4. local customs,
   5. weather anomalies,
   6. history of a place etc.
5. Deadline: students present their work to the class and hang their posters in a visible place in a language lab or school’s hall.

Comments:
The project may be changed in different ways as it may contain specific requirements (specific vocabulary given by the teacher, specific grammar that should be used). As for the grading, teacher may add peer assessment which could be an interesting added value to the project.
Let your students be creative, use their imagination, make use of different skills and knowledge!

Agnieszka Walczak