Of Waves and Men - Methodology

Title of Activity
Of Waves and Men

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

The aim of the lesson: The aim of the lesson is to improve the reading literacy of the students. To improve their fantasy and imagination. Another goal is to learn to guess the meaning of the words from the context and according to their sound.

Support materials: The text of the story.

Activities:

1. The students get the title of the story. They think about associations connected with the title. They try to predict the sort of the story, its narrative voice, mood, tone, genre. They come with various connotations of the word wave.

2. The students read the story, identify the words they do not understand and try to guess their meaning.

3. The students are asked to count the number of the words.

4. The students think about the tools of language used to convey the association with water.

5. The students role-play the different types of wave creatures described in the text.

6. They are asked to identify other meanings in the text apart from the literal fantasy ones.

7. The students read the story aloud trying to express wave/water pattern as best as possible.

8. The students think of other examples of fights between mankind and the elements and try to express them in fantasy settings.

9. The students create another type of a wave creature and describe it in 20 words. Then they gradually reduce the number of the words down to 15, 8, and finally 3.

10. Home assignment: write a 101-word story.

Evaluation and assessment method:

Teacher makes sure that all the students are involved in discussions and each of them completes the given tasks.
In order to evaluate and assess the effective impact of the previous activities upon the students, they are asked to write their own story as their homework.

Effect of the activity on RSP reading:

Practices that support students´ fantasy and imagination.

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:

Develop reading fluency.
Understand metaphors.
Improve reading comprehension.

Skills:

Develops intonation, working with voice in general.
Interpretation
Supports fantasy and imagination
Distinguish reality and fantasy
Make predictions

Competences:

Make connections between fiction and real life or personal experiences
Be able to visualise material read
Follow specific instructions and conventions
Support and justify an opinion

Bibliographic reference to be used during the activity

Tom Hadrava

Publisher: http://dailysciencefiction.com

Year of issue: 2016

Results

The expected outcomes of the lesson are:

The students will be able to guess the meaning of the words based on the sound.
Find meanings in metaphorical language.
To offer observations, make connections, speculate, interpret, and raise questions.

Recommendations

Both the teaching method and the text can help in increasing students’ interest in reading. This text tells a story of warriors fighting a rough sea which is quite attractive setting for young readers. The teacher monitors the students to make sure they all are involved in the discussions and complete the tasks given to them.