Implementation of ‘The Political Process and Citizens’ Voice in the European Union’ (SoI-ES-197)

Context for the implementation

The EU and its institutions is a content unit included in the Spanish Social Sciences syllabus for Year II at Secondary Education for adults (learners aged between 17 and 35 years of age). Therefore, this LS fits perfectly into our teaching plan and hence we implemented it as an introduction to the EU. As this LS focuses particularly on the European Parliament, we highlighted its role and functions as a core component in our didactic unit.

Implementing the Learning Scenario

We adopted a dual Project Based Learning and Collaborative Learning approach for implementing this LS. Learners in groups of 4 were assigned different tasks to carry out while in class. Some groups required extra time outside class periods. Use of mother tongue (L1) was allowed only for clarity reasons. Implementation took place the last week of the 1^st semester (once final exams were over). Class periods at ESPA (Secondary Education for Adults) take two sessions of 55 minutes. This way we had access to computer lab (Aula Plumier) and also to the school library to increase research options. Learners assessed their performance and provided feedback by means of a Google Evaluation Form . From their feedback, learners enjoyed this implementation as it provided space for using their creativity when performing their assigned tasks.  It also helped learners grasp the functioning mechanisms of the EP and also improved their collaboration skills.

Task assigned to Group 1:  Reporting their research on Europeana to classmates by means of a powerpoint slideshow.

Task assigned to Group 2:  As an energiser or warming up, this group conducted a google search for quizzes to elicit previous knowledge on EU. CEA Learners tried and brainstormed the  EU&ME Quiz.  This quiz has four sections (What is the European Union? How does the EU work? How is the EU relevant to your daily life? What’s on the EU’s agenda?) with 12-13 questions in each, and it is designed to give an introduction to the European Union.

Task assigned to Group 3:  To consolidate knowledge on EU institutions, this group prepared questions to assess comprehension by the rest of groups: i.e. How can the citizens of a state influence the decision-making process? How can Europeans influence the EU policies? Group 3 was also responsible to cater for sensible answers in different formats (e.g. videoclip, audio fragments, webpages for fact checking relevance of each answer provided).

• What is the European Parliament?   
• The European Parliament explained   
• How can you make your voice heard? 
• ¿Qué hace el Parlamento?

Task assigned to Group 4:  Group 4 was assigned a research on guidelines for using openly licensed content, focusing on creative commons licences. This group highlighted main traits of Creative Commons licences to their classmates.  They first played this video and eventually explained the Attribution ShareAlike CC BY-SA.

Afterthoughts:

When teaching young adults it is important to cater for every kind of learner needs, namely, providing diverse input for every learning style (visual clips,  listening fragments,  reading extracts, etc). This LS provided plenty of possibilities to meet their needs.

The downside of our implementation: lack of time in between class periods (i.e. teaching days for the implementation of this LS should be in separate weeks). This would allow every learner to get together outside the school facilities to rehearse their oral presentations and to improve their drawing of conclusions. As learners need to gather plenty of information, tasks assigned should be ready well in advance to the actual class period in order to avoid delays.

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

• The Political Process and Citizens’ Voice in the European Union

Did you find this Learning Scenario interesting? You might also like:

• This time I am voting (EN-CUR-137)
• Europe and me (LS-FR-11)
• See, Understand, Challenge – Be a Change Agent! (LS-PL-237)

Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.

CC BY-SA 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Europeana Foundation.