TV Talk Show

After reading the novel Downriver my class created a TV Talk Show that occurred with the characters after the end of the novel. One student took on the role of Host. Several students took on the roles of chracters in the novel. Another group of students produced the commercials and another group of ctudents chose to be the director/cameraman/stage crew.

The students worked with the host to create questions for the interview and then practiced and timed their segmants. An opening number was produced including music. We worked on the project for about one week. The culmination was a 30 minute live performance of the show that was recorded on tape.

The students and I had a memorable experience that the student still talk about.

The downsides of this project are that it does take some time to put together and it can be difficult to keep everyone on task. Under the right circumstances it can be a valuable project.

This project could certainly be adapted to manynovels. This novel worked particulary well for this because it involved several student age characters and it was fairly contemporary. I think it would be fun to do it as a culminating activity at the end of the school year and let the characters be froma variety of literary selections