Hi again! It's great to have such helpful friends! :)

I'm currently teaching English as a second language to 2 groups of intermediate students.

I'd really like to come up with a project that we could do together--a semi-big project that will really take them aback, and hopefully end up with useful product.

I want to a) get them to use English in a real context and b)encourage and challenge them to do something big and productive, and not just take in teaching, day in and day out.

I had thought of something like an animated short film, or a children's story book; I'd like something that will require many different areas of investigation and expertise. We have one little 12-year-old genius who loves drawing animations, and is quite good at it; and we have a 13-year-old boy who is going to be a politician (he says so and I'm afraid I believe it) and has a lot of other good ideas. There are a lot of wannabes in the group, and I "wanna" encourage them.

They are B-1 students-lower intermediate English.

Any ideas? I'm a little unsure about the animated short because of the software skills that would be needed--I don't know that any of us know how to use Flash, even, and I don't know how hard it would be to learn.

Have you ever heard of a project like this? I sure welcome any suggestions!