Departures - Methodology

Title of Activity
Departures

Description of educational activity
Duration: 180 minutes
Pupils’ age: 15-19
Organization of the class of pupils: individual/group work

The aim of the lesson: The aim of the lesson is to improve the reading literacy of the students. The students learn about some important historical movements of the 20^th and 21^st century. The students are able to formulate and express their opinions.

Support materials: The text of the story.

Activities:

Groups of 4. Every group is a family, however, one of them has to leave now – the one who is different. Students have to decide within their groups who is different and who is going to leave the family. Nobody wants to leave; the leaving one is a loser. After one of them leaves, we talk about the reasons why they have left. The activity is repeated again until there are just two people left in every group – the winners. This way we also form new groups.
Home – create a definition. What makes home? Illustrate your definition creating a living picture. Discussions over the living pictures.
Discussion: Leaving home. What possible reasons could someone have to get to leave their home?
Imagine you move to a new place. What would be your first steps to be done to feel there home?
Small groups. Comparing the answers, discussion.
A member of each group is packing their stuff for different reason (10-day summer holiday by the sea; 5-day business trip; going to prison for 3 years; moving away from their parents; leaving home forever). Every group makes a list of things they would pack for them and they prepare a living picture from the moment of saying good-bye. After that they show the pictures and read the list to the others – they guess where they are going.
The students read the story. How many characters appear in the story? Do they have anything in common? What? Why are they packing?
Every group describes one of the characters. Discussion, introducing the characters.
Every group writes three entries from the person’s diary – a week before the day, on the day, a week after the day. They illustrate each diary entry with a living picture. Reading, discussion.
Which country would you choose if you had to emigrate? Why?
What would you miss most from your country? What would you miss least? Why?

Evaluation and assessment method:

Throughout the lesson, ensure that your students are backing up their choices with accurate supporting details.
Teacher's observations of students’ participation in group activities and discussions.

Effect of the activity on RSP reading:

Practices that support students´ choice, collaboration, and shared control of learning outcomes can be linked to self-expressed interest in reading and engaged reading behaviour.

Connection to curriculum

Grade: 1 – 4 grade of secondary studies

Curriculum: The study of literature is focused on reading and comprehending literary texts of historical and cultural importance and relevancy either in the world or Czech literature. Students are taught to work with texts and information in different ways, to adopt the processes of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, generalization, abstraction, specification, comparison, organization, selection. The students should be able to interpret, summarize and evaluate the texts.

Knowledge:

Understand the stages of development of a hero
Learn about history
Improve reading comprehension
Organise information in a specific way

Skills:

Make predictions, deductions
Compare and contrast
Summarize
Work effectively in groups, respecting others

Competences:

Think in historical context about life or personal experience of different people
Be able to visualise material read
Follow specific instructions and conventions
Evaluate evidence
Support and justify an opinion

Bibliographic reference to be used during the activity

Pech Hynek

Publisher: not published

ISBN:

Page count:

Year of issue:

Results

The expected outcomes of the lesson are:

The students will be able to understand different life situations in historical and social context.
To connect ideas and themes across texts.
To offer observations, make connections, speculate, interpret, and raise questions in response to the story.

Recommendations

Both the teaching method and the text can help in increasing students’ interest in reading. This text promotes different characters described in different historical moments. The teacher monitors the students so as to make sure they cooperate effectively.