A different celebration of the 'Book Day'...

April, 24 - ACTIVE TEACHING

In this post, I'm going to explain what we did in the 4th session of the course. It was quite an unusual way of dealing with literatura but, in fact, it was a really catching one...

 

First of all, placing ourselves in the role of a secondary school students, we had to choose a book from the, let's say, library. Some of us explained our choice:





"I personally chose Jane Eyre's book because it is a classic. Moreover, it is a book I want to read in a near future because I like  its author, Charlotte Brontë, very much and the feministic background of the novel is also attractive to me. However, if I take the place of a teenager, the justification of my choice would be slightly different: it is a thin book, it hasn't got many pages and it seems easy and fast to read."

After picking one book up, there were some booklets distributed around the class. They explained the characteristics of many different methodologies such as project-based learning, cooperative learning, collaborative learning, problema-based learning, games, simulations and role-plays, etc.

 

Our task was to create some activities, namely pre-teaching, actual teaching and post-teaching, related to the book.

With this activity we learnt different methologies that can be used to teach literature in an English class but, what's more, we learnt to be creative in order to make literature appealing to teenagers. So, thought about dividing the class into 5 groups of 4-5people and these are the activities I proposed to work with the adaptation of Jane Eyre's:

 

PRE-TEACHING

1. First of all, I would show the students some images of the author, of 1830s lifestyle, of the geography in the North of England, about the feminism, etc. This is done with the purpose of showing the students the context in which the story develops so that they can read and interpret the story with a critic eye.
2. Secondly, I would show them the beginning and the ending of the story. The idea is that students guess what the story is about: this way students can work collavoratively, that is, they will work in groups and provide a plot for the story. Students can learn from each other and it also estimulates their creativity.

 ....

 

 

ACTUAL TEACHING

1. There were some activities in the book dealing with true and false which were quite interesting and adapted to the content of the book. So, as I hadn't read it, I decided not to creaty any activity for this section.

 

 

POST-TEACHING

1. Once students have read and unsterstood the story of Jane Eyre, each of the groups has to pick up an envelope with the name of a character written on it. There are two task to be carried out:
• Two or three members of the group have to rewrite the main plot of the book, telling it from the point of view of the character they have chosen.
• The rest of the members have interpret the story from the same perspective but through pictures, using kerpoof.
2. Finally they have to make a short presentation of their work: they have to tell the story to the rest of the class by showing the pictures to their partners.

After this class, I realised that it is very important to make students reflect on their learning. It is a good feedback for us, as teachers, and it is also positive for them because it makes them ware of their learning process.

 

 

This way of teaching litertature can be also appealing in highschool. It becomes a new way of exploring literature because it implies something else than sitting down, opening the book, reading it and answering the questions I can find at the end of each chapter. Unlike the traditional way of teaching literature, students can participate actively and they get involved in the activity almost without realising.