FOSTIN

Sometimes the best ideas on how to approach the teaching about and analysing literary works come from our students themselves. In my classes, they are encourage to come up with interactive activities focused on various aspects of literary works, and often they manage to pleasantly surprise me when they create either wonderful and insightful presentations or even games based off given texts. Their ideas, in turn, inspire me to develope them into lesson plans as a part of our project, so they in the furure even other teachers can benefit from them.

So today I want to express thanks to a number of students from CPU whose work I turned into lesson plans for this project and I want to acknowledge their authorship.

The first one is Ivana Kasalová who created a presentation on ecological themes in Wordsworth’s sonnet "The world is too much with us" and suggesting the idea that students and pupils learning about it can either try to create posters reflecting the timeless main message of the sonnet, or even try to write own poems to reflect on the impact of human activity, mainly industrialization, on nature in our days.

Another groups of students, Diana Ďuriková, Lucia Koszorúová, and Veronika Kupková, created a whole complex boardgame based on the reading of Charles Dickens’s novella "The Christmas Carol" accompanied with 60 questions payers have to answer as they progress along the board plan.

Last week I tried in practice my lesson plan called Death Penalty in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens on my English lesson as we are currently dealing with the topic of Crime and punishment. The students approached the topic creatively and provided reasonable and suitable arguments. I was positively surprised by their ideas and mature judgement in the last activity organized in groups in which they were supposed to act as judges and decide on an appropriate type and length of punishment for the selected crimes. In the follow-up discussion they compared their opinions and their exchange resulted in some suggestions for the improvement of the current legal system.

My colleague on another lesson tried with her group only the last activity in groups and she had positive feedback as well. Therefore, I recommend the last activity from the lesson plan to be used also as a separate activity for either a lesson of Civics, a common English lesson, or a lesson of Conversation.

Six COIL sessions on the topic of Postcolonial literature, led by dr. Martina Juričková from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, took place between October and November 2023. The project combined teachings from the subjects of Literature, History, and Civic education, with the students working with two texts, Rudyard Kipling’s poem Overland Mail and Louise Bennett’s Colonization in Reverse. 

Through a series of group tasks, the students broadened their knowledge of the issues of colonization and decolonization, their effects on both the native population and the colonizers, and learned more about the selected writers, the histories of India and Jamaica, as well as immigration and its relation to the current situation concerning world immigration waves. The tasks consisted of group discussions and research of the assigned topics, as well as close reading and analysis of the poems. The students were thus able to develop both their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but also their collaboration skills in an international environment.

Between October and November 2023, Annaba University, Algeria, with professor Fella Benabed in the lead, organized a COIL project titled Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), consisting of six online workshops.

Each session focused on a different type of sustainability, the first one introducing its four pillars and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The others focused on human, social, economic, and environmental sustainability, and the last session discussed global peace and partnership. The participants, consisting of university and grammar school students from Algeria, Slovakia, and Hungary, experienced activity-oriented lessons with focus on reception, production, interaction, and self-reflection, all designed to help them get inspired and learn various strategies of making their lifestyles friendlier to our planet from all possible angles. 

Most of the students admitted to not being familiar with the principles presented in the sessions before participating, and afterwards many shared that they loved discussing things they had learned during the workshops with people around them, and were feeling motivated to start living more sustainably.

The last workshop of 2023 took place on December 14, led by Bc. Linda Bernadič from Evanjelické Gymnázium J. Tranovského in Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia. This Art and Literary Workshop focused on the book Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss and let the students explore its different themes and ideas. The activities and discussions stimulated the students’ creativity, helping them envision their own dreams, future goals and ambitions in a fun, supportive environment.

A workshop titled Poetry and Music - The legacy of Blues Music in Blues Poetry, organized by dr. Pop Titus and dr. Lászlóffy Zsolt of Partium Christian University, Romania, took place on November 9, 2023. The workshop focused on the interconnectedness between a musical pattern (call-and-response pattern) and a poetic genre (blues poetry). It introduced how blues music emerged as a genre due to the appropriation of African heritage and how this music influenced the Harlem Renaissance movement. The students listened to blues music and read selected poems, discussed the impact the music had on the new poetic genre of blues poetry, and were able to learn how strongly can a particular style of music impact a whole socio-cultural movement.

A second workshop related to British traditions, titled British Christmas symbols – hands-on-activities: Christmas decorations, took place on December 5, 2023, organized by dr. Iwona Gryz of Radom University, Poland. The workshop sought to consolidate the students’ knowledge of British culture through different hands-on activities and the Multi-Sensory Teaching Method. While listening to and singing popular British Christmas songs, the students made Christmas decorations that portrayed the chosen elements of British culture in teams, their different senses being engaged throughout the activity.

On December 4, 2023, dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Exploring British culture: "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The workshop explored elements of British culture centered around the Christmas time through Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol by using various ICT tools, such as Kahoot!, Learning Apps, AnswerGarden, and more. The students were able to learn about British culture and traditions and at the same time revise different aspects of grammar. Their final task was oriented towards their problem-solving skills and teamwork - through the Five Cards Flick Stories tool, the students had to come up with their own solutions as to how they would change the main character of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Story-telling with the use of ICT on November 30, 2023. The workshop introduced the students to the interactive tool StoryBird, used to create short stories, comics, poetry and more, online. The focus was on how the students can improve their foreign language skills through the technique of story-telling, as well as to enhance their knowledge of British culture and literature. At the end the students worked in groups, using StoryBird to create their own short stories, showcasing their teamwork and creativity.

On October 16, 2023, Mgr. Ľubica Durcová from Gymnázium in Myjava, Slovakia, led an interdisciplinary workshop on the topic of Comics. The workshop was aimed to make the students see the appeal of telling stories in picture form, to teach them the history of the medium and how it adapted through time to serve the needs of the readers, and it paid special attention to superhero characters.

The workshop consisted of numerous discussions and activities related to specific superheroes, examples of picture stories ranging from Ancient Greece to contemporary memes and humor, and films based on comic books. As a final activity, the students were tasked with making their own short comics in groups and presenting it to their classmates, exercising both their creative and cooperative skills.