Homemade Books

Last week we made some books with the students:

After a few lessons about food, playing games with words and making worksheets, we thought: let's do something else! So we made a food-book with the students. The students looked in magazines and cut out food-pictures. They had to stick it on the right page: drinks on drinks page; beef on the meat page and a salad on the fruit and vegetables page. S, one of the students, even said "barbeque", when he looked at a picture of a meatstick on a grill, while we hadn't mentioned the word "barbeque" in class!  Making the food-book was a big success. The students like to read and look in their self-made book.

Last week we made another book, this one was about action words. We started reading a book about a Wizard who was kneeling, twisting and twirling and disappeared in the end. When we asked the students if they liked to make a book like that with their own pictures, they were very enthusiastic. They became even more enthusiastic when we started to take pictures. We asked "Who can dance?" and they all started to dance. We choose three girls and made a nice picture.  We also did it with jumping, squatting, singing, running, making a handstand. It didn't take long for them to take the initiative and introduce some actions we didn't think about when we were making the lesson plan. That was great! We had a lot of fun... and made a lot of noise. Hopefully we didn't disturb the other classes. But... you have to speak when you are learning a language! So I think it's a good sign when English class is a bit noisy.

After developing the pictures we made a nice book. Every page has a picture with a different move and the sentences are written in English, Thai and Shan. We made a copy for all of the students, so they can bring their books home. It's nice for them to have some pictures, but it's even more a good language exercise: they will read the book again and show other people, therefore reinforcing their learning and teaching someone else in their house.  Most of our students don't have books or written material in any language in their house so we were happy to create something tri-lingual that they could take home and keep.

Making books with students is a great way to learn (and teach) English. You can make a book in almost every subject. The students use the words a lot while making a book. They enjoy doing it, and are even more proud when they see the result at the end. They made their own book and it looks great!

-Dorien and Judith