Implementation of ‘In the Instrumental Fairy Tale – Discovering the Insights’ (SOI-PL-135)

I am a Polish literature teacher in the Bilingual University High School. I decided to implement the learning scenario prepared by Małgorzata Filip titled “In the instrumental fairy tale – discovering the insights” during my lesson about musical instruments and music itself in Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz.

Let’s talk with non-verbal speech

What I found interesting in this idea is showing the diversity of musical instruments in the past and using them to tell a story. Music is an important part of young people’s lives. They walk with earphones stuck in their ears, talk about their idols, share their favourite videos. What they do not do very often is just talk about music itself.

Thanks to Małgorzata Filip’s scenario I have decided to make music the main subject of my lesson, not just the background.

Music instruments in Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz

Pan Tadeusz written by the greatest Polish national poet – Adam Mickiewicz – is a novel consisting of 12 chapters. The whole book rhythms and thanks to that from the first line you can hear a melody of storytelling. Pan Tadeusz describes Polish heritage, traditions and typical Polish behaviors. It is a very important book for the Polish nation because it was written when Poland was partitioned and officially did not exist. Mickiewicz created this book to save Poland. He put there all he remembered – from food recipes to traditional clothes. Of course, all of that is combined with a romantic story.

Non-verbal speech in music

I started my class with talking about music in Pan Tadeusz. On the whiteboard we wrote names of instruments and thanks to the link given by Małgorzata Filip we saw their images.

Then we started to talk about diversity in music – why there are so many instruments, how it is possible that they can work together and build a melody, etc. At this stage of the lesson I used Małgorzata Filip’s link to Instruments of the Orchestra.

The main part of my lesson was focused on music in Pan Tadeusz. We used the text to talk about using the musical language to tell a story, about non-verbal speech, about feelings hidden behind the tunes.

At the end of the class I used Malgorzata Filip’s learning scenario one more time. Kahoot is a great tool to introduce the subject or to summarize the topic. I used it in the end and it was great.

Reflection

I think Malgorzata’s LS is very helpful if you want to talk about music, diversity or non-verbal speech. She created a logical and coherent scenario which guides you step by step through this subject.

Thanks to the flexibility of the scenario teachers do not have to stick to the plan but they can use all the sources and ideas in the way they want.

Thank you Małgorzata Filip.

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

‘In the instrumental fairy tale – discovering the insights’ by Malgorzata Filip

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like:

• ‘Adventurous Journey Through Europe and Culture’ implemented by Agnieszka Pielorz
• ‘Four Dimentions in Physics and Arts’ implemented by Natasa Tram
• ‘Selfies of the Past’ implemented by Raffaela Serrani

CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and provided by the Wellcome Collection.