How did we choose?Getting together in a group and determining a timeframe for the lesson plan project did not take very long; however, choosing a story proved to be a more complicated task than we anticipated. Finding a story that could fulfil the demands for cultural elements, readability, appropriate language, captivating storyline and relevance to the target age group took a long time.
We discarded several stories, including the story we ended up working with; the title just seemed inappropriate. But upon a closer look, we discovered that the story actually met all our demands, and that at times it was even a very entertaining story. My Oedipus Complex even had the added advantage of being written by an author we had already worked with during class. Story editingThe text had to be “doctored” a bit; it was very long and some words were too advanced for the age group in question. We rewrote some passages to simplify the story and substituted some of the harder words with synonyms that the students might actually be able to understand and use again in the future. A paragraph or two were deleted as they has no relevance to the storyline.
Working on tasksIn creating the task we had a couple of criterias to fulfill. Those were cultural relevance ans suited for grammatical task.
First we thought long and hard on what could possibly be taught with relevance to culture? We came up with a consciousness raising task, so that the students can become aware of the difference between the them and the people in the story, thus having the students think about what kind of culture, place, time, faith, and conditions. Afterwards the students have to write a prayer, based on their new-gained cultural knowledge. |
Why did we choose?The story enabled us to work with cultural differences as it takes place in Ireland right at the end of World War I and the family is Catholic - all things that are different from what most Danish students know. Comparisons can be made to our own culture and time, but finding tasks for cultural understanding was not an easy thing to do.
The story offered ample examples to suit our needs, however choosing fitting tasks took us quite a while as we still wanted the tasks to be interesting to the students, cover some of the teaching goals stated in Fælles Mål, and be compatible with IT learning tools. Theory and didactics |
Made by Kathrine Kelså, Henriette Laursen, and Tina Jones