Implementation of ‘Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid’ (SOI-PL-80)

The Learning Scenario entitled ‘Don’t be afraid to be afraid’ gives a great opportunity to bring together cultural heritage, to practise storytelling and to make it challenging for the students.

Reasons for choosing

The LS was implemented in the group of 20 students aged 17/18 whose background knowledge and communication skills made it possible to carry the scenario out in an interesting and creative way.

Adaptation of the LS

First of all, I decided to shift the emphasis of the scenario and focus on the element of music and story building. The LS was originally intended for the literature class and omitting the extended part of poem analysis allowed me to spend more time on active speaking,  group work and presentation of the students’ projects. Additionally, I decided to ask my students to prepare stories, nicely narrated and supported by some appropriate music to build an atmosphere of fear and tension.

Outcome

The students had a good time playing Kahoot and discovering what was behind QR codes. Subsequently, they worked really hard to contribute to filling the charts. As a result, they gained enough knowledge to prepare their own stories with scary creatures.

Preparing the project was quite a challenging task for the students. Their comments were positive, though. It was very important that the students got time to work on details at home and could present their role plays in the following lesson. Consequently, the experience of creating such a project definitely improved the students’  story building skills.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the learning scenario gave interesting background for developing a creative and engaging lesson. Apart from that, I would like to contribute to the scenario by recommending using Europeana Pinterest board as a truly practical tool for searching for dragons and mythical creatures.

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? :

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid – by Rafal Mazur

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 –The featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana, provided by Ghent University Library.