Alphabet Books - Sharing Internationally

My students finished their alphabet books a couple of weeks ago, but I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to write about them!

One of the grammar points written into Advanced I is Participial Phrases! Normally, as a way to practice, I have the class write an alphabet book together which we then share with a friend of mine who has little children.

This year, I had a goal to be more global with my students' activities. As a result, I wanted to take this project one step further. In small groups my students each made their own alphabet books about animals, fruit, video games, or whatever they wanted the theme to be.

When they submitted the final I would grade it, but they would NOT receive the book back because we sent our books to other schools around the world!

In addition, the students had to submit their books in electronic form (PPT, PDF, etc.).

Not only was this a great grammar activity, my students and I also increased out digital literacy by finding sites with graphics they could legally attribute and use. They were quite shocked when I said that just Googling an image and attributing it is not an acceptable practice.

The fact that students were sending their work to other schools made this at least a little more exciting than most school projects (some students were REALLY excited!). In fact, the next class after they had submitted their final books one student asked me, "Teacher what the the students think?"

Well, once I hear back from them, I am excited to let my students know!

In the end, I definitely think I need to make it clearer that students need to correct their grammar when I tell them to correct their grammar, but overall I am happy with our final project and am sending out the e-books to teachers today!

I am hoping to do something similar next semester, so if you are interested please contact me.

Here are some sample pages from the e-books: 

Some students added more information to their story by adding more details to the topic.

Sometimes this information was educational, and sometimes it was funny.

Some of the pictures selected were cartoony with cute lovable animals with rhymes or without them.








Some managed to find open source graphics that were more realistic


This project is happening AGAIN this Spring. If you are interested please follow this link for a sign up sheet.