Make your Idol – Homework Exercise

Kieran Gaffney

PROCEDURE:

1. I borrowed 3 posters that were around the school and took them to class (choose them carefully). Ask students to vote for their favorite and use the votes to illustrate what makes a good poster. Elicit or assist in some criteria for a good poster such as: beautiful, interesting subject, colorful, informative, hierarchy (heading // sub heading // body of information). Make the blackboard in the form of a list. Later the students will need to make sense of it and write this down as the marking criteria.
2. Ask “Who is your Idol” and elicit their responses; “My Idol is ~” Then ask “Why?”
3. Explain the homework – to make a poster about your Idol.
4. Give out the poster card and the assessment cards. Discuss and agree the marking criteria and grades with the students. Get them to write in the agreed scoring criteria for grading. (The reason for this is that I found giving low marks difficult as the posters were so personal - this is a way for them to not take bad marks personally). When they hand in their posters they should hand in the assessment cards too.
5. Agree some ground rules and write them on the board. The students should copy out rules, such as: explain what your idol does, what are they famous for, where they come from etc. Written as though the reader has never heard of them. Everything in English. One week to submit the poster. (I got them to write these out as reading and writing practice but you could of course give them a worksheet with the rules on).
6. In the next lesson just collect the posters (and cards). Explain you will provide the feedback in the following lesson (to give time for marking and any late posters to get handed in).
7. To give feedback I stuck the posters on the blackboard and asked students to grade each other based on the assessment cards. Then I handed out the marks I had given and we compared the scores. I also then gave them some verbal feedback, praise and suggestions for improvement. (In larger classes select some posters to be pinned up and give everyone written feedback). The best poster/s then goes on the English notice board.

NOTES:

1. I did this exercise with a small elective class of only five students but I think it will also work with larger classes. The five posters I got back were on Britney Spears, Jenifer Lopez, A Robot, Doraemon, and Torajiro Yamada (a Japanese doctor in Turkey). Motivation was high and most students enjoyed the homework. Even my low level students were able to research and write short information in English when the subject was of interest to them.
2. The posters could also be about anything - “What do you want to be in the future?”, “What/Who is your favourite”, Introduce Japan etc – wherever you are in the textbook. But the key elements to this exercise are choice and self expression.
3. The feedback part is important so make sure to give good simple feedback and praise.
4. Even if the students want to do it they need to be reminded by JTEs and home room teachers.

Making Your Idol

Assessment Card

Name: __________________________________________________ Class ____________