A Game of Thrones - Methodology

Title of Activity
Painted story

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

The aim of the lesson: The aim of the lesson is to improve the reading literacy of the students. To improve their reading comprehension and to be able to find connections between the paintings and excerpts. Another goal is to make the pupils develop their skill of using the appropriate language structures to express their opinions.

Students will gain knowledge and understanding of identifying supporting details and examples in non-fiction, fantasy text.

Support materials:

Paintings made by students which depict hidden messages from the excerpts.

Excerpts from the book A game of thrones: excerpts about Bran.

First excerpt: page 10 (The morning had dawned clear and cold… - a grey dire wolf racing across an ice-white field.)
Second excerpt: page 14 (“Lord Stark,” Jon said …. - Are you sure you want this?”)
Third excerpt: pages 54-55 (Finally he got tired of the stick game… - in a way even Robb would never know.)
Fourth excerpt: pages 58-59 (Everything happened at once then… - Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn.)
Fifth excerpt: pages 111 - 112 (Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder … - “He’s awake, he’s awake, he’s awake.”)
Sixth excerpt: pages 164 - 165 (Robb stood and pointed at the little man … - He will provide the rest.”)

Activities:

The students are divided into groups of 4-5.
Each group gets a set of pictures. Do not reveal at the beginning of the lesson which book you are going to work on. It would confuse them.
The students have to give each painting a title (key term)
Then they have to put the paintings into an order to make up a story.
After creating a story they should introduce their stories.
Afterwards each group will get the excerpts from the book A game of thrones. Their task is to read these excerpts and they have to find a connection between these excerpts and the paintings.
They have to justify their decision.
Discussion: The students are enabled to interact, to discuss within the group, to argue for or against an opinion.

Evaluation and assessment method:

Throughout the lesson, ensure that your students are backing up their choices with accurate supporting details.
Teacher's observations of student preparedness, student work samples, and participation in group activities.
In order to evaluate and assess the effective impact of the previous activities upon the students, they are asked to elaborate a short paper in no more than 5 minutes where they make an In-depth analysis of the main character.

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 behaviours. Teachers can organize reading instruction to develop self-efficiency, competence, and engagement in teenage students.

Connection to curriculum

Grade: 2^nd grade of bilingual studies

Bilingual curriculum: the study of literature is focused during the second year on reading comprehension of literary texts which are based on the interests of the students which involves fantasy, too. The aim of the curriculum is to teach students to work with the text, to analyse the texts. Understanding texts, weighing their merits, and utilizing the information they offer are skills that teenagers draw on throughout the curriculum.

Knowledge:

Understand the stages of development of a hero, common in almost all books
Develop reading fluency
Improve reading comprehension
Organise information in a specific way

Skills:

Use illustrations
Distinguish reality and fantasy
Make predictions
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

George R. R. Martin

A Game of Thrones; Series: A Song of Ice and Fire

Publisher: Voyager

ISBN: 9780006479888

Page count: 864

Year of issue: 2003

Digital sources

A Game of Thrones and the subsequent novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series have been adapted in a HBO television series (http://screenrant.com/song-of-fire-and-ice/), a comics series(http://www.readcomics.tv/comic/george-r.r.-martins-a-game-of-thrones), several card, board and video games (http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/330840/), and other media.

Results

The expected outcomes of the lesson are:

The students will be able to understand through illustrations, develop demonstrations.
To connect ideas and themes across texts.
To offer observations, make connections, speculate, interpret, and raise questions in response to the excerpts.

Recommendations

Both the teaching method and the text can help in increasing students’ interest in reading. This text promotes a male character with whom boys can identify. The teacher monitors the students so as to make sure they cooperate effectively.

The volume of given fragments of books can be adapted to the
potential of a group - fragments can be shorter - by cutting less important paragraphs, or be expanded to additional fragments of the same novel.