With my colleague we have tried our lesson plan Historical, Cultural and Social Context of the USA with the third-grade students, and we would like to share with you their amazing work on the poems related to the culture of the USA. The second-grade students even prepared a special decoration for their older schoolmates, bringing the American spirit to the lesson and creating a unique atmosphere. The whole lesson plan we created is focused on the interesting facts regarding history, art and culture, literature, but also geography. By applying teamwork, different organization skills and critical thinking, they were able to fulfil a variety of tasks, for instance, they managed to distinguish sights typical for the USA, interconnect specific aspects of the American Revolution, and finally, they used their creativity and imagination to write a poem based on the following task:

Write a poem about the USA which consists of 4 verses. You need to include in your poem the following things typical for the USA:

1)    Music style                                  3) Sport

2)    Food                                            4) Famous person

 Use some words from the newspaper articles and stick them on the paper (about 4).

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.