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First Grading Period Project

These longer term projects give you an opportunity to be creative and to work more cooperatively in groups on a collective task. There will be weekly deadlines; and you will most likely either have to spend time together after school working on it and/or over the weekend. I give you several different options for your project. For each project, there will be a written product of some sort. The grammar exercises I hope will allow you to write in a more accurate way, and they will also introduce vocabulary and phrases that you can use for your written texts. Always avoid the temptation to write in English and then translate into German; this cannot be easily done.

  1. Short Feature Film

    Write a script, describing the scenes and the dialogue, then film it using either a camcorder you may have at home, or one that the school owns (this can be borrowed for your use). If you use the school's camera, then your story, obviously, must be set inside the school; the equipment cannot be borrowed and taken home over the weekend or overnight. Filming would take place after school and during class, provided your script is in order and everything has been arranged with me ahead of time (i.e. two days prior to filming, at least, to give me a chance to procure the camcorder). If you want to be REALLY ambitious, you can learn to use the video editing equipment that we have in the media center, so you can add voice overs, original music (using copyrighted music can be problematic), and other editing devices. Learning to use the equipment could be fun, but it would most likely require after-school work. The finished product would be shown to our class.

  2. Story Board

    Write a short story with dialogue, and, using a camera, take snapshots of the scenes and the actors in the scenes. The pictures can be enlarged to produce a dramatic effect, pasted to a poster board, and along side the pictures would be parts of your story, typed nicely on computer.

  3. Puppet Show

    Again, you write the story, with scenes and dialogue, and you make the puppets. Do some research on puppet making, procure whatever materials you need. We can get the woodworking class to make us a puppet stage of some sort to present the puppet show to the class.

For all these projects the following guidelines will apply: