Places in Stamps (LS-HR-325) - Teaching With Europeana

How to revive the culture of sending postcards? This learning scenario is an attempt to do so. Stamps are like a mini picture encyclopaedia. I am a stamp collector and I still get thrilled with every new postcard I get in my mailbox and my stamp collection is (slowly) growing.

Landmarks and holidays

Living and working in a small rural school like mine can seem quiet and dull. However, the era we live in lets us become the citizens of the world. In my class with my 12-year-olds students, I enjoy finding out and reading about interesting places around the world. With very simple vocabulary and just the Present Continuous my students “sent” some adorable postcards from their “imaginary” holiday.

Our virtual mailbox

This lesson gives the students a context for writing. Students can follow a text template and they understand the postcard pattern. Moreover, they share a bit of enthusiasm for the wonderful places in our world.

English grammar and vocabulary are taken to the ICT room. The students use Europeana collections to find an image of a place by their choice and the image is turned into a stamp by Pixlr online editor. Their final task is to have a complete backside of a postcard designed for a virtual mailbox. The online display of the postcards from my classroom can be seen in this Padlet.

Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:

Europeana-DSI-4-LS-2020-CROATIA-MIJANDRUSIC-docx Download

Europeana-DSI-4-LS-2020-CROATIA-MIJANDRUSIC-pdf Download

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The featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and belongs to the public domain.

Ksenija Skoric says:

March 1, 2022 at 2:01 pm

Dear Kristina,
Teaching using the Europeana platform I discovered last school year opened up new possibilities for me. Countless open resources on the platform itself, but also wonderful ideas of colleagues that can be found in learning scenarios and stories of implementation, are an inexhaustible source of ideas. One of the ideas I embraced was the Places in Stamps, your learning scenario.
The very name of the LS aroused my interest because it associated me with the trip and memories from the trip. A brief description of the work of students who combine English and ICT further motivated me to study the scenario in more detail. After that, all that remained was to turn this interesting idea into the subjects I teach, which are neither English nor ICT but tourism. The proposal for the duration of the work seemed enough to me, so I planned it that way. Also, students needed to be introduced to the Europeana platform because they had not worked on it before.
From the first, the students accepted the idea and enjoyed working in pairs in a classroom with computers, where they already had tourism-related subjects. They themselves added ideas along the way, such as making a double-sided postcard with a picture on one side and text and a postage stamp on the other side. They really liked having the opportunity to be creative in a slightly different way than usual. As they learn three foreign languages, I gave them the opportunity to choose, but mostly it remained the first foreign language – English. They also added a few foreign languages that they do not learn – Greek, Hungarian, Czech… As I am not an English teacher, I hope that no one will resent some possible mistakes that may have crept into the postcards. It would be good to include other teachers in this project too.
The students used the links provided from the script, and some others, of course. I just couldn’t find where the self-assessment table was attached. They enjoyed the photo search immensely, everyone wanted to have a postcard that would be different from the others, not to say better. We merged the final results into a Google presentation, in no particular order. Everything worked out as planned according to the script template, this could probably be successfully incorporated into some other subjects, not only in tourism. Thank you, dear colleague Kristina, for the wonderful idea and realization of your learning scenario.
Best wishes!
Ksenija

Anonymous says:

March 14, 2022 at 11:45 pm

Thank you for the comment. The assessment table was ready with the LS, however, it was probably left out by mistake by the coordinator of my group. Here is the assessment, a very simple table that can be used as a rubric in the process of creating postcards or for peer-assessment.
Postcards: Peer-assessment

Put a plus (+) for each part used properly in the task.

A greeting and the name of the receiver:

Name of the place (city, country):

The weather (It’s…):

3 activities (am/is/are …ing):

Final sentence and greeting:

Address (the „English“ way):

A stamp:

Spelling:

March 15, 2022 at 6:31 pm

Thank you. I had the assessment ready with the LS; it was a simple table to plus a plus sign (+) for the following: A greeting and the name of the receiver, Name of the place (city, country), The weather (It’s…), 3 activities (am/is/are …ing), Final sentence and greeting, Address (the „English“ way), A stamp and Spelling. It was to check the main parts of a infromal letter and the information written.
I always enjoy seeing my students’ work after some time has passed since the activity.

Landmarks and holidays

Our virtual mailbox

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