This lesson is for : Grade 10: English
Summary
This lesson is all about empowering students to think about word choice when writing. Too many of our students use the same basic words over and over again when constructing their writing samples. This assignment is a chance for students to send these words to their final resting place while discovering new words to use instead. Students worked in groups preparing for their word’s untimely demise. In this assignment, students were responsible for creating a tombstone, a tribute, an obituary, and finally a eulogy presentation for the class. Students had to research elements of obituaries and eulogies, collaborate with group members to complete the work , and use creativity to produce their tombstone and tribute. The lesson ended with students placing their word in a small coffin to never be used again in a writing assignment for the class.
The following resources are provided for this lesson:
TIPC Ratings
Research & Information Fluency
Rating: Ideal – Explanation: Students were presented with a word that was on it’s death bed. They were tasked with ending the word’s life by making a gravestone, creating a tribute, writing an obituary and writing and performing an eulogy. Students were given the freedom to choose the appropriate means to determine information for these tasks. Students were allowed to process the research and then assemble the information in a powerful way to display their findings.
Communication & Collaboration
Rating: Approaching – Explanation: Students worked in self selected groups for this project. Group members decided on roles and tasks to complete with minimal teacher intervention. Students had the freedom in this assignment to choose the digital tools that help them to best communicate and complete the assignments.
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Rating: Approaching – Explanation: Students had to think outside of the box for this assignment. They were given a word and they had to transform the word into a person with whom the audience needed to make a connection with. Students were given the freedom in this project to choose the best digital tool to help them with this process.
Creativity & Innovation
Rating: Ideal – Explanation: The Word Funerals Project was filled with the opportunity for students to be creative from the first assignment through the final burial of the word. Students had the opportunity to create a unique visual tombstone to represent their word that was displayed on the wall for the class to view. Students then had to use their creativity to make a tribute for their word. They need to use their research to bring their word to life by creating a life for their word and then sharing this life with others. Finally students used their research and new knowledge to produce a fictitious obituary and eulogy for their word. Through this project students not only helped a word to die but also help new and better word choices come to life in future writing assignments.
Lesson Materials
