| Teachers' Forum HOME | MAIL | EVENTS | INFO | LINKS | QUESTIONS | MATERIALS |
|
Postgraduate Diploma Culture, Comenius and the Primary Classroom | |||||
|
These extracts are taken from a diploma project submitted by Mirosława Sikora from Szkoła Podstawowa im. T. Kościuszki in Połaniec in 2003 for the Studium Podyplomowe Kształcenia i Doskonalenia Nauczycieli Języka Angielskiego. For more about the Studium Podyplomowe - see Postgraduate diploma projects and the approach to culture in language teaching taken there - see The Methodology of British Studies on the Postgraduate Diploma Programme This work shows very effectively, through the eyes and work of a teacher at the centre of a Comenius project, what can be done in a school where there is commitment from teachers, parents and pupils. It demonstrates how culture can be successfully introduced to 10 year-old children (Polish 4th year) who are language beginners, through material appropriate to their age. In addition how significant EU projects such as Comenius have been in giving opportunities for bringing culture into the classroom in a substantial way. It has been undertaken, like so many EU projects, from an explicitly intercultural perspective with the aim of encouraging European integration. As many of the links connect to original student work you will find some slips of language there
Reforma context Examples of Comenius project work · a legend or traditional story
My school is a huge one. We have 1044 pupils in 37 classes (1-6) plus 18 pupils in a class called ‘0’, and 75 teachers. We work from 7.50 am to 4.00 pm every day. It is not easy to pass information or discuss current problems with everyone in such a school. Reaching agreement, as can easily be imagined, is also rather difficult. Nevertheless, most of the rada pedagogiczna agreed that our school needs changes and both the reforma and EU programmes are a great opportunity to encourage innovation in educational practices and materials.
Our school wants to be a modern educational institution with pupils and teachers speaking foreign languages, cooperating with people creating the local environment, cooperating with other European countries, supporting our country’s efforts to become a member of the European Union.
The speed of progress in the contemporary world, the flood of new technologies and new global problems mean our work has to be adapted to the challenges teachers and pupils have to face. The objectives and philosophy, I would say the ‘spirit’, of Comenius appeared very valuable for the school, the parents and the kuratorium. Getting involved was a good opportunity for broadening everyone’s horizons and raising awareness of the values and cultural practices of other countries.
Being the school coordinator of the project, and the first person who took the initiative, I must admit that I am very proud of our work. I believe deeply that it is worth doing because of what the project has brought to all the people involved. When this work was written we were in the second year of the project and about 45 teachers and 700 pupils had been involved with Comenius in some way, and the programme was at the top of our list of school priorities.
The ‘Programme of School Development’ is one of the basic documents of our school. It contains five priorities: · Socrates - Comenius programme and cooperation with partner schools; · Health Education (we belong to a network of schools promoting health and healthy lifestyles); · Sport as an important factor creating physical and mental fitness; · Co-operation with parents (to get them involved in school life);
To sum up, we can say that the programme is:
Reforma contextThe curriculum reform introduced in 1998 by the Ministry of Education planned educational transformations involving changes in teaching programmes - Reform of the Education System - a preliminary concept, Ministry of National Education, Warsaw, 1998. Teaching is to a greater extent to be based on the following aims:
The Socrates - Comenius programme gives a priceless opportunity to adopt all the aims of the reform as well as an opportunity to develop the teacher’s own independence and creativity. The rada pedagogiczna considered the possibility of incorporating the Comenius project into our curriculum, an obligatory condition for carrying out the project. We decided that the best solution was to do this within the educational ‘path’ called European Education. We worked out the subjects and objectives to be introduced to our classes and Comenius was one of them.
(For the sources of material in this section - see http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/socrates.html, www.socrates.org.pl, www.socrates-uk.net)
Socrates is an EU education programme. It aims to raise standards and achievement in all levels of education by encouraging and supporting European cooperation on a range of projects, initiatives and professional development opportunities.
Comenius School Projects (CSP) These promote transnational co-operation between schools giving pupils and teachers from at least three participating countries an opportunity to work together on one or more topics of mutual interest. This co-operation enables participants to exchange experiences, explore different aspects of European cultural, social and economic diversity, increase their general knowledge and learn to understand and appreciate each other's views. Comenius School Projects should be integrated into the regular activities of the school, take place within the curriculum, involve several class groups, and have as wide an impact on the school as possible.
The objectives of Comenius The overall objectives of Comenius are to enhance the quality and reinforce the European dimension of school education, in particular by encouraging transnational cooperation between schools, contributing to the improved professional development of staff directly involved in the school education sector, and promoting the learning of languages and intercultural awareness.
Comenius seeks to help those learning and teaching in schools to develop a sense of belonging to a broader and outward-looking European community - a community characterised by diverse traditions, cultures and regional identities, but rooted nevertheless in a common history of European development.
Comenius contributes to enhancing the quality and reinforcing the European dimension of school education by:
Comenius contributes to promoting the learning of languages in school education in Europe by transnational measures designed to:
Comenius contributes to promoting intercultural awareness in school education in Europe by transnational activities designed to:
The two last points were not relevant to our school but the first three were our priorities, for we consider them to be extremely important in a modern contemporary educational institution.
Comenius in Połaniec: ‘Far Away but Close at Heart’ Comenius participants work in groups of three or four partner schools and the partnership lasts for three years. Our project was entitled ‘Far Away but Close at Heart’ and our partners were:
Ø John Hampden Primary School, Thame, Oxfordshire, UK Ø Scuola Elementare Roncalli, Settimo Torinese, Italy
These are the topics covered by the project and integrated into the school curriculum (* work done by my classes)
Examples of activities undertaken
Evaluation Working on the European project has brought only positive effects to the school community so far. The process of teaching and learning has become more enjoyable since we started the CSP:
Examples of Comenius project work at Połaniec Choosing themes - the ‘cultural island’ of Comenius The Comenius programme is a very good opportunity to create a ‘cultural island’ in the classroom. Working on the projects enables comparisons to be drawn between cultures. Undoubtedly, pupils are put in a situation of gaining valuable experience while learning cultural awareness. Projects that they send to other countries are supposed to be shown there, discussed and commented on. Projects received from foreign partners are also discussed and displayed. Such a situation creates inevitably a greater awareness of the cultures involved.
Comenius ensures interactions between participants and increases the understanding of the target culture as well as their own. The programme allows exposure to other cultures, providing an authentic experience.
The legend of the Dragon from the Wawel Castle is an element of Polish culture which seems to have been exploited too many times and become overused. But when I asked: ‘What legend would you like to show to your fellow pupils?’ the answer was unanimous and clear. This means that the legend is perhaps overused but still it is something important for children and represents their genuine interest. Should a teacher fight and force them to look for some not-so-well-known legend? In my opinion - no. The aim of the project is to exchange the children’s worlds, so let it be the dragon.
Considering the calendars each school deals with a similar issue. The pupils’ year goes around some predictable events. But are they so obvious to the children in the UK or Italy? Are the calendars and cassettes we obtained from Thame and Settimo Torinese useless for us because we cannot predict their contents? Of course not. They are interesting and new. Not only bring do they new pieces of information but also they increase our level of interest because we can hear the real voices of the authors, we can see pictures and we believe they did their best to help us understand, as we did working on ours.
One of the projects that were planned for this year - the second year of the partnership - was a legend or traditional story in book form and/ or video presentation. The project was done jointly with my colleague, a teacher of Polish. For results, see the legend poster gallery.
The work was done with the 4th year classes in their second year of English, aged 10 and beginners. Before carrying out the project I was aware of the difficulties to be faced. Ø How to successfully tell a legend with very young beginners? Ø How to prepare the lessons to achieve the final result using English my pupils could understand?
I decided to write a new syllabus for my pupils to enable them to work within the Comenius project. For me it was an experiment. Before presenting ‘present simple’ my pupils were introduced to ‘past simple’ in order to help them tell fairytales and legends. I gave up introducing the tense in the traditional way and did it based on the interest children at this age have for fantastic stories of any kind. (Then it occurred to me that it was a very good move because a year or two later children seem to lose their interest for fairytales and that very useful material becomes useless.)
Another method was taken from a course organized for teachers willing to get involved into the Socrates - Comenius programme in Oxford in 1999. It is a kind of theatre or drama. These are the stages:
Lesson one We chose the legend to be told to our partners. We did it in Polish and there was no discussion about any legend other than the Dragon from Wawel Castle. The children felt that this was the most well-known Polish legend and it needed to be presented. In groups the children prepared their versions of the legend. I asked them to simplify and to shorten it - possibly to five stages.
Lesson two Vocabulary like: shoemaker, dragon, prince, princess, women - nouns and adjectives like: lonely, horrible, cruel, young, brave, clever was pre-taught.
Pupils were asked to work in pairs and match the two columns in a way that creates the best collocation: lonely brave cruel clever shoemaker dragon prince princess
The children presented the collocations and we wrote them on the board: Ø a clever shoemaker Ø a cruel dragon Ø a brave prince Ø a lonely princess
Lesson three I told the class a story about a dragon and a story about a lonely princess using mime and gestures. Then I asked my pupils to discuss in pairs the verbs that will be needed to tell the stories. Some of the verbs they memorised while I was story was being told, some needed to be presented. We did it in the form of a picture dictionary. These are the verbs: lived, ate, looked for, got married, guarded, cheered, were scared.
Lesson four I stuck the nouns, verbs and other needed parts of a sentence on the board and asked the children to come and make sentences from the given elements. These are the sentences: A dragon lived in Kraków. A princess lived in a tower. A prince looked for a princess. A shoemaker killed the dragon Then we put the adjectives in the right places and the children wrote the sentences in their exercise books.
Lesson five, six and seven Pupils were divided into groups of five and given sentences from the two stories written on strips of paper. I presented the traditional beginnings and endings: Once upon a time and they lived happily ever after and they were asked to order the sentences into a story reaching its climax.
Each group chose a story to make into a book. In groups each pupil’s task was to draw a picture to illustrate a stage of the story in A4 format and discussed the technique to be used for illustrating it. Each pupil’s task was to invent something his/her character could say in a speech bubble. I suspected some well-known pop culture ‘chunks’ would be used (like arhg… wow! I got you! Die monster! Yuk! Yummy! I love you! and so on) but in fact few were. The cover page was a product of the whole group.
Each group presented the story they made - see the legend poster gallery - and answered some evaluative questions like: ‘Was the work interesting?’, ‘What have you learned?’, ‘Would you like to repeat this experience?’.
Here is the story: Once upon a time… A cruel dragon lived near the Wawel Castle in Kraków/ A lonely princess lived in a tower. The dragon ate young women/ A brave prince looked for a wife. The people of Kraków were scared/ A horrible dragon guarded the princess. A clever shoemaker killed the dragon/ The prince killed the monster. Everybody cheered / The prince and the princess got married … and they lived happily ever after.
Reflections After producing a book we prepared a drama which was recorded on video. The whole project lasted 5 weeks (2 lessons/ week). Pupils were very engaged in their work and proud of the final result. They memorised the stories although it was not one of the tasks set. I observed that a feeling of doing something important accompanied the work. In answering the evaluative questions the pupils also mentioned that they learned how to co-operate in a group and how to divide tasks. They concentrated on transmitting their knowledge of the legend in the best possible way.
Another thing that could be observed was that teaching the past tense very early is somehow natural and it fulfils a need for storytelling which is very strong among young learners. The pupils were given an opportunity to release a part of their store of knowledge, attitudes and interests in the valuable context of sharing with an intercultural audience.
A calendar displaying events through the year Calendars with the 4th class - using authentic materials and carrying out own projects Last year we did a project entitled: ‘Calendars displaying events through the year’. I wanted to use the materials from Thame to introduce my pupils to some authentic materials and make a nice connection with September - the first month of our meetings. We sent and obtained calendars with pictures and a cassette to accompany them. Here is the tapescript (prepared at Połaniec - our English partners did not send one) - see English transcript:
Lesson one I brought the calendars and we had a closer look at September (the children know the names of the months). We discussed the picture and talked about my pupils’ experience as they have crossed the border between classes 1-3 into classes 4-6 which is connected with a lot of changes. The pupils had had one teacher, now they have many and had started to get grades. They need to move between classrooms. All the teachers are new and so am I.
We discussed the feelings that accompanied them during the first weeks of the 4th class and selected ambivalent ones such as upset and nervous on the one hand - happy and excited on the other. We discussed in Polish why the situation is so ambivalent. When adjectives appeared we translated them into English with the help of dictionaries and wrote them on the board: nervous, upset ¬ feelings ® happy, excited ¯ ¯ new teachers doing new things making new friends
Lesson two I reminded my pupils that we are involved in an international project and asked them to recall their partners (they needed to go outside and read the information from the board in the hall). I asked them to guess if the month September in those schools is similar to their own or quite different (they could look at the picture) and asked them to recall the subject of our first lesson (Welcome back to school!).
We listened to the English cassette, the pupils were asked to fill in the gaps and we talked about the English September. Our conclusion was that there are more similarities than differences. September For children in England September is the month when they come back to school after the summer holiday. They go into a new class. Some children feel upset about leaving their old teachers. Lots of children feel happy and excited because they will be making new friends and doing different things. I was very very nervous when I first started John Hampden School, but now I know everyone.
Lessons three and four Task: to show a Polish September to English pupils. The pupils were divided into groups of four and planned a calendar page with pictures and short descriptions. (Because of the shortage of vocabulary they used dictionaries and consulted the teacher). The leaders of the groups presented their work and the calendar pages were displayed in the classroom.
Reflection Using the authentic material raised curiosity and made the children more dedicated to the task that needed to be done. They also remembered the vocabulary better than that taught during a ‘traditional’ lesson. As stated earlier curiosity is one of the most important reasons for studying another culture.
Some further ideas for using calendars As autumn progresses it makes us think about Halloween and it seemed advisable and worthwhile to try to use the cassette accompanying the calendar to present the customs of Halloween. This is the tapescript: At Halloween we dress up as ghosts. We then go trick-and-treating with our parents. Trick-or-treating is when you go to people’s houses - you know - and they give you a treat, If they don’t give you a sweet or treat you play a nice trick on them. We celebrate Halloween by having a party and putting a candle in a pumpkin that has a scary face. This kind of listening exercise is very useful at any level just for celebrating Halloween, refreshing knowledge or some English vocabulary. It could be the starting point for preparation for a party or for noticing some differences between the Polish and English way of celebrating this part of the year.
Calendars as project work We can also use the calendars as a starting point for a greater project entitled for example: ‘ A Calendar of a Typical Year for Polish Pupils’. In this case we can start by analysing the English or Italian Comenius project calendars, and through some listening exercises drawing some comparisons between school traditions.
The next step could be an analysis of the most important events during the Polish school year. Then in groups the pupils can gather necessary visual and verbal materials for achieving the final product. The work could last for several weeks - pupils can come to the teacher after lessons or during breaks and ask about the vocabulary and language to be used. There will be two kinds of the final product: Ø The calendars as a written piece of work with pictures Ø An audiocassette describing the most important events during the year - for tapescripts see Polish tapescript and English tapescript
Reflection Calendars using this method were made by the 6th class last year. Observation indicates that the work was very interesting for the pupils bringing a lot of joy and new cultural knowledge of British, Italian and Polish cultures. The pupils asked investigative questions and treated their work seriously.
Exposure to culture through Comenius projects brings primary school learners of language priceless benefits.
a. Despite the difficulties and the time-consuming nature of project work I have found that it is worth finding and building links between people in different countries of Europe because there is so much that pupils can benefit from.
b. The main benefits we experienced throughout the Comenius project were:
All partners decided to evaluate the first year of Comenius (thus before starting the books with legends) by using a survey - see survey results (in Polish only). The coordinators of the programme negotiated the questions to be replied to by the teachers and pupils of the participating schools.
Questions for teachers:
Questions for pupils:
The results in Poland A positive answer to all questions was supplied by 43.3% of the teachers interviewed. 86.6% of teachers who contributed to the project confirmed that it is useful to exchange knowledge with the other teachers from other countries.
A positive answer to all questions was given by 74.6% of the children interviewed. Here are some special things the children liked in working on projects and in just participating in the programme:
These are some comments of the children from Thame after the first year of Comenius:
c. Project participation leads to an improvement of pupil’s:
d. All pupils regardless of special needs/ disability were included in the project and made a contribution. Project work is an excellent opportunity to get all pupils involved even in mixed-ability classes.
e. Through direct communication with those in other countries pupils involved in Comenius School Projects, key skills and attributes can be developed, such as: · increased self-esteem and confidence · communication and interpersonal skills
· enhanced skills in the ICT
f. Furthermore, through having an immediate ‘audience’ for their project activity in their partner schools, pupils can benefit from increased motivation for their work, especially if they receive such wonderful and motivating letters (translated and displayed on the Comenius shelves in our school) - see English letter and Italian letter. ‘The building of Europe is also carried out through the reciprocal knowledge, the respect of the various cultures and a common commitment among the schools to create generations of young people animated by a strong spirit of belonging to the same culture.’ From Profesor Gianluigi Camera, Headteacher of Scuola Elementare Roncalli, Settimo Torinese.
‘(…) such warmth and humanity will live with us for a very very long time. This is I feel the true spirit of Comenius and what we must encourage, foster and nurture for the children of our world that we can guide, develop and influence in our shared time with them.’ From Alan Haigh, Headteacher of John Hampden Primary School, Thame.
‘In addition to the didactic aspect we have noticed the human warmth, the hospitality, the generosity of your school. Your school transmits not only knowledge but also human values that appeared to us very clearly.’ From the Italian participants who visited Połaniec
Curiosity is the starting point for knowledge and the systematic discipline of learning because curiosity enables pupils to educate themselves. Curiosity starts every real process of learning. Very often after finishing school people do not remember the things they were taught, they remember what they learnt. And the more curious pupils are about a subject, the longer they remember it. Our - the teachers’ - task is to raise pupils’ curiosity, to encourage them to ask questions, to increase enthusiasm, to provide information and make space for initiatives. Each teacher must figure out for him or herself how best to channel the enthusiasm of the pupil.
Considering culture we need to admit that some textbooks are dull and sell clichés while culture is a living, dynamic and interactive process demanding communication between nations, exploration and critical thinking. The Comenius project gives pupils a lot more exposure to real people, materials and facts than just textbooks and even authentic materials but without the possibility of direct communication which Comenius provides via letters, e-mails, visits and exchanging projects.
Comenius has also made us more aware about globalisation. Analysing and discussing projects very often shows vividly that there are a lot more similarities in lifestyles, everyday activities and general knowledge than differences.
We can add that teaching culture through Comenius develops pupils’ critical thinking, however they are unaware of their new ability. Discussing projects to be done and those completed, giving opinions, comparing, discovering, assessing, evaluating, reflecting are elements of critical thinking, a skill relevant in contemporary world which values highly independence of judgement. One thing worth adding here is that it is not only the pupils who benefit by working with culture projects, the teachers’ work is also stimulated by such new challenges. |
|
Produced in Poland by British Council © 2003. The United Kingdom's international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity. |