In this activity, students work on their own creative and analytical responses to the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz) and cooperate to create a website to showcase their work.
In groups, students select a one-word theme that relates to the novel and which they use as inspiration for their final project. Throughout the rest of the course, they work individually on a creative piece/artifact - for example a painting, a poem, an essay, a song, a podcast - that responds to their selected theme. In addition, as a group they create a blog which they use to collect and showcase their work at the end of the course. The project of the members of the group can link with each other or operate more independently.
Please see this website for further information on the project and to download project guidelines and criteria.
To do work that students find personally relevant.
Having freedom to explore their interests, students engaged more in depth with the novel and significantly improved their writing.
There were some technical challenges with working with wordpress.
Showcasing each group’s work at the end also leads to interesting discussions on the novel.
Students work together and individually to creatively respond to a theme that relates to the novel explored in the course. For a description of this strategy, please see here.
Students give feedback and evaluate each other’s work. For a description of this strategy, please see here.
At the end of the course, students have a blog that showcases their work. For a description of this strategy, please see here.