Let's write an acrostic poem

Alev Çalımbay Atakul / 50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

April is the last month of our project and before putting an end to it, we decided to make a joint product. We thought about an activity which can be creative enough to make our students excited. So, writing an acrostic poem including both the letters of our project, "Time Travel in Literature" and the whole story of Great Expectations. 

My students wrote the last 4 lines/letters of the project, which include the ending of Great Expectations. They got together and made meaningful lines which also rhymed. They sometimes used dictionary to find the proper words, and sometimes they used me. :)

They proved that they can also become creative poets as well as successful writers.

Process of writing the poem

The whole poem as a joint work

We used web 2.0 tool Meeting Words while we were combining our poem together.

How my students wrote their endings...

Alev Çalımbay Atakul / 50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

My students did really a good job to rewrite the ending of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. They were newly learning some basic grammar structures in English and this activty was a serious opportunity to use those structures for my students.

On the other hand, they needed to be creative enough to make up a new ending for the book. Who knows, maybe this was the first step of their writing career...

And as far as I see, they managed to bond their dream ending to the novel successfully. I'm proud of them.

My students while they're writing their endings

I wrote a note for my students too...

Cover Designs for E-book

Alev Çalımbay Atakul / 50. Yıl Chrysler Secondary School

As April activity we formed an e-book which includes our students' own endings for Great Expectations. We also asked the volunteer students to design a book cover. 

You can see my volunteer designer students Elifnur, Minel, Seher and their cover designs below:

Our e-book, "What if I were Charles Dickens" is published

In March our students read the worldwide classic Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. After they finished the novel at the end of the March, they started to think about the ending of the book. Because one of their most important task is to write their own ending for the book in April.

 The aim of this activity is to motivate students to improve their use of English language through reading a worldwide classic.

 And also we aim at encouraging the students to write in English, developing their imagination and creativity.

All of our students were responsible for the same task: creating an end of their own for Great Expectations. After they sent us their endings, we gathered them in one place and created an e-book as a collaborative product.

Some volunteer students designed covers for the e-book by using web 2.0 tool Canva. We took a poll to choose the best cover with Google Forms. Finally we formed the e-book on Flipsnack.

Now, the main activity of April, our e-book is ready for everybody to read what came out of the fresh and limitless minds of our students:

                         

     What if I were Charles Dickens e-book