This student chose to put vocabulary cards in her bag, along with a copy of the book. On the outside of the bag, she illustrated  it with pictures that she printed straight from the internet.

I know many ESL teachers tend to shy away from doing differentiated book report projects, but these type of projects have their merits. I believe differentiated products are a great choice for ESL students because it allows them to:

• chunk it down – Students can chunk down the information into manageable bite size pieces. They don’t have to write long detail oriented reports about the book.
• set boundaries  – Rubrics provide the structure that very clearly spells out what the grading perimeters are. Students know what they need to do in order to earn a good grade.
• have an artistic outlet – Differentiated products allow students to infuse a little bit of art into their project. Incorporating art into their project helps the students to take ownership of it. The art work could be something as simple as arranging a collage made from magazines or printouts taken from the internet. Or it may be as elaborate as creating a hand drawn pop-out style of product . Differentiated products give the students permission to be creative.
• think outside the box – Students are set free from the drudgery of writing a summary style book report. Differentiated products allow the students to creatively express the setting and plot, as well as, giving them the opportunity to focus on highlighting the character traits that make the main character and minor characters come alive.  It also gives them a chance to analyze and comment on the author’s purpose.
• interact with the text – Books in a bag encourage students to interact with the text. Students must thoughtfully consider what things to put inside their bags. They have to ask themselves questions about what things are critical to the story. It gives them the opportunity to choose items that may be related to the setting. Additionally, they may choose objects that are important to the character or have significance in relation to the plot.

This is a nonfiction book in a bag project about rain and lightning. In the bag, the student placed a water bottle, an illustrated poster about the water cycle and a few weather vocabulary cards.

Each layer describes a different aspect of the book.

This book burger poster capitalizes on McDonald’s popular slogan.