Read, Think and... Write!

Read Write Think has an awesome array of free classroom resources  which are really cool for ESL teachers. Today I'm sharing what I've created for The Great Gatsby (book) and its author, Scott Fitzgerald,  but I have used these resources before and one of them very recently to write poetry. If you missed it then, please check this and the results here.
Taking advantage of the new film adaptation (therefore my new interest to reread Fitzgerald's masterpiece - check it here) I tried out some other resources by Read Write Think.
I chose Cube Creator to display info on the book itself. Here's a screenshot of how it looks like:

My option was Story Cube where I could "map out the key elements of a story", in other words, I entered the required information according to the six distinctive parts / topics. When all is complete, we can print it and fold it to have a cube as you can see below; we can also save or email it.

Then, using a different interactive resource, the Trading Card, I filled it in with Scott Fitzgerald's biodata.
Here's how it looks like when you begin:

Again, after filling it in with all the required data, we can print it, cut it and even laminate to have a card, and download it as a pdf document and / or email it. Here's the final product:

I must say I found these two interactive tools simply great for organising and summarising data.
In this case, I used these two free resources to prepare materials for classes and though I did it for a book and an author, we can use them on movies, environmentalists, singers, actors - you name it! However, just like I've done with the acrostic poems resource I've already mentioned, why not ask our students to do them themselves??? These are free web tools which they can use either in the classroom or for homework tasks. They can do it individually or in pairs and then email us for correction. Something also great about these Read Write Think resources is that one can save the draft and change / add whenever we wish to. With the final cubes and / or cards, sts can always review stuff, ask questions to classmates, play a guessing game,...
Asking students to do this will surely be funnier, engaging and memorable once they will have to scan and skim loads of info before being able to write and go straight to the point - oh yes, because there's always a word limit!