The fun they had - Methodology

Title of Activity
The fun they had

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 activity is to develop reading literacy of pupils, to support their reading skills, to use their competencies to analyse the source text, to compare the present based on their experience and the future based on the text, to reinforce their language skills when verbalizing the results of their work.

Support materials:

A collage of pictures representing different books.
A short story – The fun they had. Each student is given a copy of it.
A sheet of paper, pencils, colour pencils for each group.

Activities:

Warm up activity (competition) – students work in groups. Each group is given a collage of pictures representing different books. Their task is to find as many books as they can.

Fire - Kristine Cashore
Harry Potter and the cursed child – J.K.Rowling
The fault in our stars – John Green
The catcher in the rye – J.D. Salinger
The hunger games – Suzanne Collins
The maze Runner – James Dashner
City of bones – Cassandra Clare
Red Queen – Victoria Aveyard
Throne of glass – Sarah J. Maas
The kite runner – Khaled Hosseini
Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
A clockwork orange – Anthony Burgess
The Hobbit – J.R. Tolkien
Ann of Green Gables ( - L.M. Montgomery)
Lord of the flies – William Golding
Paper towns – John Green
Thirteen reasons why – Jay Asher
The princess diaries series – Meg Cabot
The chocolate war – Robert Cormier
Stardust – Neil Gaiman
Prince of Thorns – Mark Laurence
Metro 2033 – Dimitry Glukhovsky
Precious stones – Kerstin Gler
Little women – Louisa May Alcott
The last wish – Andrzej Sapkowski
The sun is also a star – Nicola Yoon
The picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Inkheart – Cornelia Funke
A thousand splendid suns – Khaled Hosseini

The texts are handed out. The students read the short story.
The students discuss the story which shows us how the future education will probably look like. They can express what they like or do not like about this type of education
After that students are divided in to groups. Each group is given a piece of paper and colourful markers. Their task is to draw a comic. The students will set the characters from the story in to the present school. They will try to depict their feelings about the present school system.
The students will present the results of their work.

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:

Students understand a text being read.
Students find characters in the text and can describe them
After reading the story they can identify the advantages and disadvantages of the present and future school system.
They select information.

Skills:

Students analyse the text.
They work with different sources of information.
They search for and classify information.
They can identify and interpret correctly the feelings of the characters in the story
They are able to work in groups.
They can create a characteristic of a character based on the story.
They can complete the tasks successfully

Competences:

They can identify and interpret correctly the feelings of the characters in the story
They are able to work in groups and individually, too.
They can accept other members of the group
They can understand the emotions of the characters, they are emphatic

Bibliographic reference to be used during the activity

The fun they had

Isaac Asimov

The Best of Isaac Asimov

Sphere, 1973

ISBN13: 9780722112540

336 pages

Digital sources

Results

The expected outcomes of the lesson are:

The students will be able to understand the text and to compare the present system of education to the future one.
To offer observations, make connections, speculate, interpret, and raise questions in response to the text.

Recommendations

Both the teaching method and the text can help in increasing students’ interest in reading. This text describes the possible future system of education and can help students to discuss its positives and negatives.

The teacher monitors the students so as to make sure they cooperate effectively.