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Project info 5

Practical sheets for class work

1. Gulliver and teaching programmes

Comparison work

Objectives:

  • intercultural skills:
    • comparative study of how the day is organised in different countries
    • linguistic skills: expressing comparison, indicating time
    • lexis – school
    • written and oral comprehension
    • written and oral expression
  • reading contributions: “If you want to spend a day at school with me, what do you need to know?

a) We looked up the lesson on the topic of school in our textbook and noted how it presented a day at school (at a Czech or French school) and what vocabulary we learnt.

b) Next, we prepared a contribution for Gulliver using the expressions in our textbook. Working as a group, we looked for what was specific to our school.

I put the following question to my pupils:

  • What surprised you when you arrived at your secondary school at age 15?
  • We compared results and described in detail everything one needs to know in order to spend a day among us (having the right badge, leaving coats and shoes in the changing rooms, looking for timetable changes on the computers in the corridors, etc.).
  • We then drafted our Gulliver contribution.

c) Working in groups, we read all the contributions on this topic (outside the classroom). We looked to see which school had a system comparable to ours and where there were differences (eg. a uniformed porter). We discussed the advantages and drawbacks.

The pupils noted the differences in school organisation in European countries. They gave thought to the practical details of their life at school. They applied the lexical knowledge already acquired, this time in real communication, adding any necessary terms. They turned to account their knowledge of several foreign languages which enabled them to discover details of life at school for the foreign pupils. They put questions to them.

2. Gulliver and strategic skills

Organisational work

Objectives:

  • to organise one’s work
  • to be able to take decisions
  • to shoulder one’s responsibilities
  • to chose one’s role within the group
  • self-assessment skills.

I explained to the pupils how the Gulliver discussion forum would operate and how we would incorporate it into our French classes.

a) We discussed how to form effective groups within the class in order to read and make contributions to Gulliver and to work outside the classroom (number of persons in the group, pupils with a computer at home).

b) Once the groups were formed, each of them decided on the form its work would take. I observed that even details were very important to them – the colour of the file, the graphical presentation of the group, the plan of work, the timetable, the responsibility of each member – everything being clearly set down in the file.

For the first time, pupils took decisions about the organisation of their school work in a language class. They were also very pleased by the freedom to choose topics. They discussed it among themselves and chose the topic they liked best.

I am able to state that this work was very educational. The pupils fully realised how difficult it is to stick to a timetable laid down by themselves, and to do the work chosen by themselves. They were not assessed by the teacher but by their classmates or by themselves. Thus they developed an important skill in the process of learning, not just a foreign language but learning in general.

3. Gulliver - skill in expression

Work on production

Objective:

  • socio-cultural skills
  • communication skills
    • developing an idea
    • creating a topic from various standpoints
    • broadening the range of information sources
    • expressing the past.

We chose the topic “How did your grandparents live when they were young? Ask people around you”.

a) We had a discussion in class. The pupils told how their grandparents spoke about their past (spontaneous discussion, everyone saying something; the pupils find out who lives with his grandparents and who has no contact with them).

b) The pupils put questions to their grandparents at home (What were your school timetable and curriculum like? What did you eat? How did you spend your leisure time? What was prohibited at school? What clothes were fashionable? etc. – individual work).

c) We compared the results of our individual research and prepared our contribution to the Gulliver forum (class work).

d) We invited our French language assistant (a retired person who sometimes helps us with conversation classes) into the class. The pupils put the same questions to him and we compared his answers with those of the Czech grandparents. We noted the differences between our two countries, and also the difference between the grandparents’ lives and that today.

e) We then searched the discussion forum for contributions giving examples from other countries to see if there were differences.

4. Gulliver – intercultural skills

Work on common and different traditions in Europe

Objectives:

  • to develop pupils’ intercultural and plurilingual skills
  • to discover the cultures of European countries

a) We chose the topic “To what traditional festivals in your country would you like to invite me?”. My pupils looked for a festival they enjoyed. As it was November and they had organised a St Nicholas party at school, they chose that. We prepared the text of the contribution and posted it on the Gulliver forum.

b) We looked up all the forum contributions on the same topic. We read the contributions in all the languages (French, English, Spanish and German). In French and English we read the complete text, but in Spanish and German (which the pupils do not learn) we looked for isolated words that we could understand so as to guess at the festival in question.

c) On the map, we found the countries from which these contributions came.

d) We drew up a timetable of the festivals presented, and compared it with Czech festivals.
On the Internet we searched for an explanation of the festivals with which we were unfamiliar (St Jordan in Bulgaria, Vardavar in Armenia, etc.).

5. Gulliver – Expression skill

Work on production

Objective:

  • communication skills
  • developing an idea

We prepared the contributions in small groups. In order to prepare a contribution on the topic of “How to preserve traditions and why” or “If you wanted to spend a day at school with me…”, we worked in groups of 4.

Each pupil in the group had a sheet of paper on which to write down the text of the contribution; the sheets were of different colours (white, blue, red and green).

For ten minutes all the pupils prepared the first version of the contribution and wrote it down. Then we reorganised the groups, this time having four groups in which everyone had the same colour paper. For ten minutes the pupils compared their work and added information from the others. They redrafted the text of the contribution.

Finally, we read all the contributions and looked to see where there were differences. We decided on the final version of our contribution and posted it on the Gulliver forum.

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