ty english ideas

roxychix

hey
have taught ty english for number of years but feel that i need to breathe some more life into my classes as seem to be just doing the same thing stuck in a rut etc.....
the main achievement we do every year is the school magazine other than that we seem to just potter along....
any help would be great
thanks in advance

Hermia

I did The Road with my tys last year for the first time but did a pre-reading post-apocalyptic project with them beforehand which they really seemed to enjoy.
They have to come up with a scenario as to how the world has ended, who has survived, what the world looks like, how the survivors interact with each other etc it's group work based and they have to write letters from survivors, design warning brochures, write newspaper articles and then present it to the class as their assessment. There's loads more room for audio and visual resources too which they love, some of the kids interviewed students after school one day, asking them how they think the world will end, others recorded zombie apocalypse shorts and news reports. Some of them did whole powerpoint presentations and I was really impressed with their ingenuity! It might seem a bit morbid but it really got their imaginations working. I showed them an episode of "Doomsday Preppers" too!
What about creating a class poetry or song lyric anthology with their favourites and personal responses? I do a lot of drama work with mine as well and film analysis to prep them for that aspect of the comparative!

spurious

You could get them to make podcasts to help JC students.

Red Hare

You could get them start a blog. Here is a link to a school english blog that incorporates podcasts http://www.sccenglish.ie/

eager tortoise

I've never taught TY English, but I've often thought that if I did and had a motivated group I'd love to do something like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It happens in November. It's an American initiative, but there appear to be a lot of classroom resources on their website: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/educators

Heydeldel

The Podcast idea is great! I'm stealing that one for whenever I have a TY class.