Introduction
This project was something we did at the end of the term, partly as a way of concluding and reviewing the work we had done with our classes over half a year and partly because we thought it would be fun and would give us something to put on our bedroom walls. We used it with our Senior 1 and Senior 2 classes, who are aged between about 15 and 18.
Our lessons last 40 minutes, so the plans fill that time.
The project itself took us four lessons to complete, but because we had planned it from the very start, everything that the students did to create their own popstar doubled up as revision of earlier topics. We found that this project helped give our lessons a clear structure and meant that all the students could see where their work was leading. It allowed more able students to develop their personal approach whilst ensuring that the less able students did at least some work and (hopefully!) stopped them from losing interest.
The related lessons we did before starting on the main project were: Families, Parts of the Body, Clothes, Feelings and Emotions, Hopes and Dreams, Music (quite important – we taught different music genres and played clips of them) and finally Rhyme (also important – we taught what ‘rhyme’ means and gave examples of how to use it)
Overview
Lesson 1: students design their popstar’s background
Lesson 2: students interview their popstar
Lesson 3: students write a song for their popstar
Lesson 4: students present their popstar as a newspaper article
Lesson 1: Design a Popstar
1) Introduce the project and tell everyone what they will be doing for the next four lessons. Tell them they must invent an original popstar (I had a lot of people who wrote ‘Ricky Martin’ or even ‘Keanu Reeves’). We had to explain what ‘popstar’ means.
When we did the first lesson, we told each class that the person who made the best popstar would recieve a very, very good prize, emphasising how all the people who did not win would be kicking themselves!
2) Tell everyone they need to invent the following for their popstar: Name (give examples), Age, Place of birth, Musical Style (e.g. rock, pop, indie, RnB). Write the headings up on the board, explaining what you want (10 minutes), and then give everyone about 5 minutes to write something down. We found it quite fun to allow very unreal popstars, who could be born on the moon or be three hundred years old.
3) Tell everyone they must invent their popstar’s Family Background (parents’ jobs, siblings, children, relationships etc.). This also took about 5 minutes for most people.
4) Tell the students to describe their popstar’s Appearance (clothes, eyes, hair etc.). We let people do anything, such as giving their popstar three eyes and wings. We spent about 5-10 minutes explaining all the things people should include. It should take 5-10 minutes for the students to write out their popstar’s appearance. If anyone finishes early, they can draw their popstar.
If you have spare time, you could choose some people to read their popstar’s details. However, we found that running out of time was more of a danger than not having enough.
Lesson 2: Interview Your Popstar
We found that some of our classes did not know the word ‘interview’. We were able to give some classes a whole lesson on interviews earlier in the term, when they had to answer questions as if they were a popstar or the richest person in the world. At the end of that lesson we staged a pretend televison interview, with a host and a guest chosen from the class (I played the cameraman.) We found that this was good preparation the project (although some people still did not remember the word ‘interview’).
1) Give a list of questions that everyone MUST answer for their popstar, explaining what they could write for each one. This should take around 10 minutes. Next give the class about 10-15 minutes to write down the answers for their own popstar.
The questions we used were:
‘Hello. How are you?’ (No-one was allowed to answer ‘Fine thanks, and you?’)
‘How did you become a popstar?’
‘What are your dreams for the future?’
‘What are your hobbies and interests?’
‘When did you last feel…?’ (Everyone must choose one from: embarassed, scared, bored, jealous, uncool)
We encouraged unusual answers to the questions to make the popstars more interesting. Before moving on, you could ask people to stand up and read out one (or more) of their answers
2) Tell the class that they must make up 2 or 3 of their own questions. If they want, they can use the examples you provide e.g. ‘How’s your love-life?’ (we had to explain ‘love-life’)
‘What do you spend your money on?’
‘Have you eaten?’ (a bit of a China joke)
‘How often do you see your family?’
‘What are your pet-hates?’ (again, we had to explain ‘pet-hates’)
After you have given the class a few minutes to think of their questions, give them about 5 minutes to write the answers for their popstar.
One problem with this lesson is that there is quite a lot to fit in. it took us a while to get the timings right.
Lesson 3: Write a Song
We decided to give a very strong structure to the song lesson so that the students would not be too lost. This lesson might not have worked if we had not already given Music and Rhyme lessons.
1) Write up music genre headings on the board. We used Pop, Rock, Classical, Indie, RnB, Jazz and Dance. We had already explained these types of music in our Music lesson.
2) Ask everyone what feelings or ideas they associate with each type of music. It should take 10 minutes. We had to lead the classes quite a lot to get something that resembled this:
Pop – Happy, Glad, Lucky, Excited, Love.
Rock – Angry, Excited.
Classical – Thoughtful, Calm.
Indie – Alive Dead, Sad
RnB – Sexy, Excited.
Jazz – Cool, Sexy.
Dance – Excited, Happy, Crazy.
3) Write up the following verse structure: I feel _ when___
I want to __
I think ____
Students must fill in the gaps with their own words. The feeling they use must match their popstar’s music genre (some people may have chosen no genre, so watch out for that). We found we had to explain very carefully to avoid people writing something like ‘I feel happy when I hear pop music’.
You may need to give an example, such as: I feel love when I see your face,
I want to kiss you, again and again,
I think we should be together forever,
I will never leave you.
After everyone has written a verse (about 10 minutes) you could ask one or more people to read it out.
4) Write up a selection of rhyming words, from which the students must pick two pairs.This should last 5-10 minutes. We asked people if they could think of rhyming words themselves, rather than just telling them.
We used: sad – bad – mad – glad – had – dad.
you – true – new – do – who – blue.
die – fly – sky – high – my – why – cry – bye.
near – fear – tear – dear – here.
5) Tell everyone to write a four-line chorus, using rhyming words at the end of the lines. They do not need to be complicated e.g. If you get mad,
I feel sad.
I want to cry,
I want to die.
This could take about 10 minutes.
6) Ask at least one person to read out their finished song. After we did this, we sang whatever the person had written. This always got a laugh, probably more for the standard of our singing than any comic talent.
Lesson 4: Present the Popstar
Before doing this lesson we asked our school to provide us with paper, which we gave out to each class at the start of the lesson. It would have been quite expensive if we had had to do it ourselves becasue we needed more than 750 sheets of paper each.
1) Tell everyone they need to make a newspaper article about their popstar. At the top they must write their popstar’s name and their name. Make sure no-one copies from the board by writing “popstar’s name by your name”, which is what happenend to us.
Write on the board a suggested structure, which most people will follow. Ours looked like this:
[Popstar’s Name] by [Your Name] Interview
Age: Place of Birth: Appearance:
Music genre:
Questions
Family: Hello. How are you?
How did you become a popstar?
What are your dreams for the future?
[Song Name]
What are your interests?
Verse Chorus When did you last feel…?
_ _ [Your question]
_ _ [Your question]
This is designed to cover both sides of a sheet of paper. Some people might need more paper, or might want to use their own paper and finish the popstar at home. Some people wrote their popstar out differently to how we suggested. These tended to be the best. We gave everyone 30 minutes of lesson time to write up the popstar.
2) Tell everyone you will take in all the popstars next lesson to choose a winner (added motivation!)
And finally…
I hope you have been able to follow this lesson plan, or series of lesson plans. It took us a long time to sort through all the classes’ popstars after they had been handed in. Some people had not done anything, but most of them had managed to finish and some of the articles were extremely good. The project felt like a really good end to the term and was quite reassuring because we had a month of lessons planned, in which we knew exactly what we would be doing.
As a prize, Joe and I invited all the winners to come out with us for a banquet-style meal and a party afterwards. As there were 24 classes altogether, it took two evenings, but was really fun and I think everyone had a good time. We left the prize as a surprise until right at the end (partly because we were not sure what it would be) and handed out invitations to the winners in class. We also chose second prize winners and gave them sweets.