Professional development | Book Club Class 4.0 – WSI

Last night's Book Club class went really well despite its low turn out of just three learners. Using a trusty teacher's aid of mine 'Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley' I had earlier in the day sketched out a comic strip depicting a short scene from Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days.

A scene in which Phileas Fogg, servant, and Parsee girl are accosted at just the moment they are to quit  India, and many a misadventure there, to start for Asia, by a police officer. Swiftly, they are taken by horse and carriage and locked up without much more than that 'at half-past eight you will appear before a judge'… I had skimmed through it on the bus, between private lessons, before going to work at the language institute in the hope of finding something entertaining for the evening's class. 

I was looking for a scene I would not have to grade too heavily for my elementary learners. Now I know having finished the book that this scene is, actually, plot-critical, and it worked well to gather suspense in the class.

At the institute (now finished with my private lessons) I sat down to grade the page I had selected and to decide what I should sketch. Thirteen pictures completed the scene.

 

                                               

Firstly, the learners were given a variety of clippings of texts from a variety of sources and asked to decide which two of them where  taken from literary sources, such as a play, novel, or short story, and which weren't. After five minutes learners had worked together to underline textual evidence in order to prove their findings. Five more minutes and learners were matching authors with titles (I put these up on the whiteboard), and then those to the sample texts they had at their tables.

From Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley: 

'This activity encourages close attention to what is actually said in the text. In looking for clues, and in marking features of the language, the students are learning how to use the text itself in discussion. Focusing on the particular helps to discourage vague theorising.'   

From this point, as I thought learners were ready and engaged enough to invent their non-vague stories, I handed out completely arbitrary pictures of people, places, and objects. Ten minutes passed as they thought of stories and made notes, individually. I asked of them to guess each other's stories only by looking at the pictures, and asked that the learner who had thought it up reply only 'yes' or 'no' to the other's questions in order to encourage practice making questions; not only that but also enough speculative thinking to tie in with the activity that followed this. Finally, learners revealed their stories.

'A story can be sparked off by very small details – a smell, a gesture, a sudden sound, or a chance remark [...] The purpose of the introductory activity (Stage one) is to put the students in the right frame of mind for speculation, by inviting them to devise their own stories from a few visual pointers. The pictures suggest a framework which they can fill in as they like.' 

I elicited anything the learners might know about Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days. I introduced the scene before giving them the comic strip. I handed out photocopies of the sketches I had done out-of-sequence, and asked them to suggest what might happen in the story, and to put them in their correct order. A few minutes passed and I read a few lines of the text to help them along and then they spent a few minutes revised their suggestions.

'In Stage two, the activity becomes more controlled. The students are not inventing, but recreating a story from pictures. But they do not have the text. The challenge, then, is to build up a plausible story in their own words. 

For a final listening stage and to confirm predictions I read to them the page I had chosen on the bus in the morning. I walked over and picked it out in full view from our new library of 20 or so books which I've contributed to the institute, hoping to gain some interest in it.

Here, we were supposed to talk about the 'what', 'how', and 'why' regarding the next events of the story, but time was not permitting, and anyway the most developmental - and most important - stages of the lesson had already passed. I did, however, take the opportunity to let them know they could at any time borrow from the library.

sources: p.19, 89 of 'Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley'.