Book Club class was opened well tonight with learners discussing meaningfully by the end of it some poetry given to them on hand-outs.
Without a great deal of planning, and still tired from the meticulous planing warranted by last week's series of workshop-esque classes titled 'job interview success', I think I did alright, considering. With only a lesson sketch and one good resource Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley, I left staging, timing, classroom management, etc. to be what they might.
Narrative:-
Learners listened to a recording, ex YouTube, of their local subterranean railway, trying to identify the sound. 'Highway! Train! Car!' were suggested, before finally, 'the subway!' After this, they could even guess which railway line it was, 'blue line A!'
Keeping the lights dimmed I asked the group to work around and find five billboards I had printed on A4 and stuck up around the room, to read them closely and find one they liked.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves. After five minutes I seated them in groups of four.
I prompted them to recreate their favourite billboards, in groups, from memory, drawing it if they wished onto a piece of paper. Note, even though this was all preparatory and a sort of warm-up, some wanted to know which part of the billboard they were 'meant' to discuss and 'must' write down, I told them simply to discuss what they had seen; I think this kind of gradual comprehension of the topic is alright if it means they are more immersed in it later, as it becomes less mysterious and abstract.
I set up the billboards at the front of the class in full view and conducted short plenary feedback. Learners reported their general likes and dislikes about them.
We then talked briefly about whether there were any interesting billboards in their city that might contain poetry. One described a long, interesting Quino comic strip extending along a long subway tunnel; another mentioned a heritage montage at an historic railway station.
The poetry hand-outs I had prepared were now ready to be handed out (short poems that could potentially be displayed on public transport, as printed in my resource Literature).
The aim of all this was, by first stimulating an everyday situation, to draw a connection between some written works they might see in public, outwards to the larger poems they now held, and towards a full-length article on the wider themes of dangers, difficulties, and delights on public transport, which, ultimately, prepared them for discussion in the next class (in the next class half of the learners who came to this one didn't show, and a new mix of learners did! who weren't really impressed by the theme. See here.).
Twenty or so minutes passed with learners reading the short poems, checking with peers and using dictionaries, and making notes. At this point all learners were quite engaged, including those who at first couldn't understand the warm-up task.
During feedback I could hear some really interesting interpretations of poems and we went over two or three lexemes as a class (below).
On the board I marked out three columns: difficulties; dangers; delights. Learners quickly gave me suggestions for these aspects of their own railway network, as by this time we had breached the 60-minute mark; another teacher came to collect a learner for their class. I stopped to hand out the reading text for the great discussion in the next class, newspaper article 'Crime and violence against Underground – Police plan new strategy to make the Tube safer.' Now they were now absolutely ready to read it, thinking of ways to improve their own network whilst reading. In fact, the entire lesson could have been a way to supply a purpose for reading that text, at home.
As I would see in the next class, of the learners who actually returned, none could find the time to read the text, and so the wider discussion never took place, nor did we bother reading the article.
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