Implementation of “World Café Stories” (SOI-HR-471)

Introduction

This learning scenario was implemented with a group of 5th grade students (11-year-olds), who have been learning English as a foreign language since grade 1. The school they attend, Jagoda Truhelka Elementary School, has a 140 years long tradition of providing elementary school education to children aged 7 – 15 in the city of Osijek, in the eastern part of Croatia. For the past ten years I have been teaching English at this school, which boasts not only of its tradition, but of ensuring a contemporary and engaging learning environment for its students in present days.

There are 20 students in this class, but 16 of them attended school on the day the learning scenario was implemented (8 boys and 8 girls). As a group they are highly motivated for learning English, quick to acquire target structures and to use them in meaningful situations, and, as a group, they respond well to learning challenges, such as problem-solving tasks that require them to demonstrate creativity. However, while they generally strive academically, they sometimes lack team-working skills, such as active listening, respecting others’ ideas, and negotiating a common ground.

Prior to implementing this learning scenario, the students were dealing with the topic of jobs in our English classes, naming and describing particular professions, as well as practicing using Present Simple (to describe routines) and Present Continuous (to describe ongoing activities) while doing so. I decided to implement this learning scenario as it provides ample opportunities to hone students’ team-working skills and to build personal connections among them while doing so. With the adjustments I made, it also provides further reinforcement of the target structures (vocabulary related to jobs, Present Simple, Present Continuous). While even prior to implementing this scenario they were already pretty confident when using these structures, in this particular case they had to use these structures in a creative way that would require them to use their imagination and to speculate, in order to make connections between what they know about the world (jobs they are familiar with, knowledge of the ways in which the world functioned a century ago), and what they see in immediate evidence (professions they see in the photos assigned to groups).

The learning scenario was implemented over the course of two lessons, each 45 minutes long.

The planning process – finding the suitable learning scenario

I started exploring Europeana knowing I would like to focus on the topic of professions with my students. The article Peculiar Jobs, which is a part of The Past But Not As You Know It exhibition (https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/the-past-but-not-as-you-know-it/peculiar-jobs), narrowed my search and directed me towards the topic of unusual jobs of the past. While I did find a learning scenario that focused precisely on the jobs of the past (https://teachwitheuropeana.eun.org/learning-scenarios/jobs-in-the-past-ls-fi-36/), and few stories of implementation of the same scenario, it did not offer what I was looking for – an opportunity for my students to take part in a collaborative writing activity. So, I resumed my search, until finding the World Cafe Stories learning scenario. The scenario in question provided me with precisely what I was looking for, a method to follow, and an idea to use photographs as a starting point for developing students’ speaking skills and as an incentive for a collaborative writing activity. The subject matter of this learning scenario on the other hand was not applicable to what I wanted to achieve with my students, which is why I decided to keep the suggested method, but to apply it to the content that is relevant to my classroom.

3             Implementing the learning scenario

3.1         Lead-in: introducing the students to the topic and the structure of the lessons

The first lesson started with students revising the target vocabulary (naming and describing jobs, using Present Simple) by means of completing a crossword (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sx4vWEOmWhO8zq_4vhMbausRvWO7JcfA/view?usp=sharing).

Afterwards, the teacher guided the discussion into considering which of the jobs from the handout did not exist a century ago and why. The students were then instructed that their task today will be to closely inspect photographs that they will be given and to speculate about the professions of the people they see in the photos. They were told that these professions belong to the past and do not exist anymore. The students were told that they will work in groups and the World Café Stories method was explained to them. (10’)

The assigned photographs were as follows:

• a rat-catcher
• a lamplighter
• a knocker-up
• a pre-radar listener for aircrafts

3.2         Brainstorming: grasping an overview

Students were divided into 4 groups of 4 students and each group was assigned a working station. There was one photograph depicting a profession of the past on each of the stations. As the teacher gave a signal, the group had 5 minutes to inspect the photograph and to make assumptions in order to answer a few questions – Is the person in the photo holding something? What is it for? What is the person in the photograph doing? When the time was up, a group would move to the next station. The groups would continue to move in a circular way across the stations until they returned to their initial station. (20’)

3.3         Collaborative story writing

Once they were back at their initial station, the students were to compare their ideas with the ideas of the previous 3 groups. At that point they were to decide which of the proposed ideas they would stick with, their own or one of the others’, if they could combine more ideas into a single story, and how to build upon these ideas in order to expand them into a more detailed story. 

The groups started working on developing their ideas. They had to come up with a name for the profession depicted in the assigned photo, and describe it using target language (outdoor / indoor, dangerous, interesting, boring, well-paid, etc.). When they came up with all the details, they had to write a story from a first-person narrator point of view, following a given template (guidelines in the form of questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t0DgS2PAIVoQE16Cco-UKfKIYAld8NMX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106843732110414961648&rtpof=true&sd=true). (30’)

3.4         Presentation of the stories and assessment

Each group then presented their story to the class. When all groups were done, the class took a look at factual information about all the professions, and had to, in a game-like activity, match each description with a corresponding photo (https://learningapps.org/display?v=pj5tq2jhc24).

Afterwards, there was a class discussion, the students evaluated all the stories on task completion and on creativity. They made conclusions on whose story was the closest to factual information and the furthest from it. The class was encouraged to share what they liked best about the stories they had heard and which of the professions they thought would be suited for them.

The final stage of the lesson was assessment. Students were given reflection time and asked to complete an exit slip (a brief anonymous survey in Croatian as their native language: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18PWADBut8enOqdo0Wf6lUsf0c8wAaNOLtpmEGusehd8/edit?usp=sharing). (30’)

4          Conclusion

One of the students’ tasks was to name the professions depicted in the given photographs. The assigned jobs were as follows: a rat catcher, a lamplighter, a knocker-up, a pre-radar listener. After inspecting the photographs, the students’ imagination came up with these names for the professions in question: a sewer searcher, a lightman, a human alarm clock, a speaker-man.

Some of the groups were quite on point with their ideas about what the images represented and had their ideas almost completely coincide with the factual information. However, writing their stories in a way to reflect reality as closely as possible was not their assignment and was not a goal I had set when planning these lessons. What mattered more, for the students and myself, is the fact that the students collaborated and that they practiced their speaking and writing skills in English language, as well as their team working skills. Last but not the least, as inner motivation is crucial for success in a subject, and school success in general, it is as important that the students enjoyed themselves during these two lessons, and that they did – the average grade they gave for the workshop in an anonymous evaluation was 4,6 out of 5. In some of the comments students specifically named what they had enjoyed – an opportunity to move around, working in groups, being creative, learning something they hadn’t known before – among others. My first attempt to implement a learning scenario from Europeana proved to be a success, which is why it will definitely be just the first of many, I am sure.

Link to the learning scenario implemented: World Cafe Stories (LS-HR-225) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)

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

PDM 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Örebro County Museum.