Stories from Home

This lesson will encourage International Baccalaureate English B and ESL students to practice their skills in writing outlines, creating a series of interview questions, translating, public speaking and video production for a global audience.

All members of the class come from SOS Villages throughout the African continent. They all attend SOS-Herman Gmeiner International College in Ghana, but they hail from Burundi, Ethiopia and Tanzania. They live at this boarding school from August to June of each academic year. They will return home this summer and come back to school in August as "Seniors".

Internally, the goal of this lesson is to encourage the students to keep their English speaking and writing skills honed by completing a video story about their village. It is also hoped that the collected videos will become a part of the school's archives and be used to celebrate the accomplishments of SOS children.

Externally, the project aims to broaden the students' awareness of "audience" on a global scale. They will not only be preparing the videos for known schoolmates, but they will be sharing them with teens from different continents, different language groups, and different economic realities.


*Each video must last between 8 and 10 minutes.
*Each student must speak in their own video (whether it is voice-over or on-camera) for at least 3 of the total minutes of the story.

Pre-production:
Students will create an outline of their plan. They will provide details about interesting locations and the people who will be portrayed in the video. They must also consider the "arc" of the story and plan accordingly. They may focus on the music of their region, an interesting elder in their community, intriguing dialects, a traditional festival, etc.

Production:
Students may conduct interviews before leaving campus in June, but they must document at least 35 minutes of video while at home. They must interview at least one person. They may also create group debates and discussions that are filmed for the project.
They must also communicate their progress (at least once a week) via the Facebook page.

Post-production:
Students will return to school with at least 35 minutes of video that will then be edited with the help of the Video Club Advisor and members of the IT Department.
Videos will be published as a YouTube page and students will respond to questions and comments about their work on Facebook.

Final videos will be due on September 12, 2011.