Incidences / Blue notebook n. 2

Title of Activity
The Redhead

Description of educational activity
Duration: 90 minutes
Pupils’ age: 15-19
Organization of the class of pupils: individual/pair work

The aim of the lesson: The aim of the lesson is to improve the reading literacy of the students. To be able to describe a character of a person and find possible reasons of ones’ behaviour. The students will recognize the importance of social apprehension and every single individuality within society.

Support materials:

Text of the story
The circle social diagram
The drawing of a person

Activities:

The students complete the circle social diagram and discuss them in pairs. They speak about the importance of every circle.
Students in pairs discuss why, where, and how people meet new people. They write a short dialogue describing a first meeting of two people. The whole group discuss if it is possible to recognize the people who we can trust.
The students are asked what it means for them when we say that somebody is ‘useful’.
The students read the story and complete the drawing of a person according to the description of the main character.
Each student introduces their image of the main character along with their personal feeling of the character.
The whole group discuss a possible relationship between the author and the main character and the character’s personality and personal life.
Afterwards each pair thinks of people from different social circles living lonely lives and the reasons of that. The ideas are then shared.
The last topic to be discussed is wasting time. Everyone thinks of moments in their lives when they ‘waste time’ and why.

Evaluation and assessment method:

Throughout the lesson, ensure that your students are backing up their choices with accurate supporting details.
The teachers should encourage the students to express their opinions. Every idea is subjective, nothing is really correct or wrong.
In order to evaluate and assess the effective impact, the activities should be subsequently completed by each student and each student should actively participate in the discussion.

Effect of the activity on RSP reading:

Finding that their comprehension is positively evaluated and their opinions discussed the students lose the previous resist towards reading and gain some confidence.

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:

Describing a character
Develop reading fluency
Improve reading comprehension
Organise information in a specific way

Skills:

Deduction, generalization, abstraction, interpretation
Use illustrations
Compare and contrast
Summarize
Work effectively in groups, respecting others

Competences:

Make connections between fiction and real life or personal experiences
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

Kharms Daniil

Incidences

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

ISBN: 1852423064

Page count:

Year of issue: 1993

Digital resources

The full text can be found on http://danielcharms.com/charms/plays/play1.html and a video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx21o6GRAfw.

Results

The expected outcomes of the lesson are:

The students are able to work with their imagination.
They are able to support their opinions with arguments.
They are able to see the facts in context, speculate, interpret, and raise questions in response to different descriptions of the character.

Recommendations

Both the teaching method and the text can help in increasing students’ interest in reading. The character is a total loser and the students find it easy to feel for him. The teacher monitors the students to make sure they follow the activities and participate in the discussion.