Implementation of “A Soldier’s Perspective of War” (SoI-GR-576)
Author: Marianthi Tsepeli
Introduction
What thoughts go through a soldier’s mind as they toil in the trenches, day in and day out? For this story of implementation, I drew inspiration from the learning scenario “A Soldier’s Perspective of War” (LS-MT-272) and combined it with the books “The Enemy” by Davide Cali and “La guerra delle campane” by Gianni Rodari. Through a variety of activities ranging from language arts to STEM, students had the opportunity to enter the mind of a soldier in the battlefield, immerse themselves in the concept of war and the destruction it brings, and envision ways in which the reality of war could be different.
This SοI was implemented by 10 students of the 6th Grade of Primary School,11-12 years of age, who have had some previous experience of the Europeana platform, and some exposure to digital tools. Their CEFR level ranges from A1- to A1+. The duration of the SOI was 5, 45’-minute sessions. The implementation took place in the classroom and the school ICT lab, with some activities being assigned as homework. The SOI products (poems, stories, drawings etc.) have been uploaded by the students on a padlet. The students’ artwork was also displayed at the “StudentWorld” (“Mathitokosmos”) Student Creativity Festival, held annually in May in the local Municipal Theatre of the students’ hometown.
The stages of implementation
The subject of war is unfortunately topical and still concerns the world nowadays. My aim was to raise awareness on the sentimental toll war has on soldiers. From the learning scenario, I utilized the brainstorming activity and adapted it to my classroom, and drew inspiration from the diary entry students wrote and visualized to design similar activities, which were acted instead. The overall aim was to impart that war is a horrible circumstance which turns humans against each other, dehumanizing them.
Step 1: The students enter a dark classroom, where sounds of war are heard. I give them a special UV pen and, in teams, they try to find hidden messages that I have written with invisible ink in the classroom. They must find the words and synthesize the messages (“Let’s be friends, not enemies” and “Please, let’s stop this war now”). They then wonder who could have written these messages and what the subject of the lesson is. A brainstorming activity follows, to activate the students’ previous knowledge; students write their thoughts on war on post-its and stick them on the board. Next, we go through images from Europeana, the “Trench Life” segment from the “Visions of War” a story and two videos depicting soldiers’ life in the trenches. Students describe what they see while simultaneously being exposed to new vocabulary items . Finally, they do two pre-reading activities on the book “The Enemy” by Davide Cali on a worksheet.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TU0Zp3tuYBGC8rlRo00KvXSULVeEMkrF/view?usp=drive_link
Step 2: The book”The enemy” is read aloud, pausing for questions and predictions. The students do a sequencing activity on learningapps to revise the plot, and a wordsearch to consolidate vocabulary. Then, they are given two versions of the hero of the story as a soldier and as a regular man, and are asked to draw and fill the pictures with his thoughts related to war and peace respectively. As homework, they are assigned to write what the message in the bottle the soldiers send at the end of the story contains, imagine what happens next in the story, and upload it on the padlet.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19D0u1LWLeVl5Fv81TDm-PeCYghaXPNN9/view?usp=drive_link
Step 3: The students’ work is presented and peer evaluated. Then, they are introduced to the form of the diamante poem and are asked to write their own war/peace diamante poems in teams. Finally, working on their own, students write a short paragraph of what a soldier is thinking in the trenches and do a drama activity resembling “hot seat”: one student sits in the middle, while the others are whispering their thoughts, thus emphasizing how agonizing a soldier’s thoughts can be. In the end, the student in the middle has to think of an exclamatory sentence to silence these thoughts.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UHbJ09TV5SsRO5b4tHT4Y0Hyzvu7TbEe/view?usp=drive_link
Step 4: What could the soldier have written in his message? Should he have written it plainly or in code? In this session, students are introduced to various types of code (Morse code, pigpen cipher, hart chart, invisible ink). They study the codes, practice them and make their own messages. Finally, in teams, they play a game where they try to gather as many points for their team by guessing the messages the other team has written.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ri0JrMyztc9gbIME69HlaoydItVfFXS8/view?usp=drive_link
Step 5: The students watch a video of the book “La Guerra delle campane” by Gianni Rodari and are asked comprehension questions. The story was used to ignite students’ imagination in order to re-imagine a war setting in a creative way. Students are then directed to the school ICT lab where, in teams, try to re-imagine the Europeana images shown at the beginning of step 1, editing them on Canva and making them look like they were taken at a peaceful time or a long time after the war. At home, they were asked to draw the second half of Europeana images of a gun and cannon I had photocopied in half in a sort of symmetry exercise, adding their own creative touch and imagining the guns in a different setting. The SOI ended with the completion of a summative evaluation Google form by the students.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCGXnD-E3408qq_qQqoqjiuFJgtJj3ju/view?usp=drive_link
Outcomes
An awakening for the students
• The students’ linguistic skills and competences were boosted.
• The students utilized the knowledge gained in mediation activities, as they experimented with text types (message in writing and code, narration, monologue, creative writing exercises etc)
• The variety of differentiated activities (linguistic, artistic, digital, drama) gave all students the opportunity to participate, irrespective of their CEFR level.
• The students were exposed to texts, images and videos from different parts of Europe, so their cultural awareness was cultivated, helping them realize that war affects everyone in a similar way.
• The students were impressed by the STEM activities. Learning about codes helped them realize the difference between a coded message and narration or description, and the activities honed their collaboration, creativity and problem-solving skills.
• The students’ digital literacy was cultivated, as they worked on image editing tools for the first time, enhancing their creativity and imagination.
• In this SOI, empathy was promoted, as the students realized that the enemy is, in fact, “ene-me”, that all parties in a war suffer, fear and long for peace.
A fulfilling experience for the teacher
Europeana offers a wealth of resources for educators. When combined with implementation practices, as in the Teaching with Europeana blog, the result is an endless source of inspiration. The resources utilized made the point of the SοI more salient, the students associated the literary works with the harsh reality of war. The editing of the images of trenches found in Europeana helped them dream of another, peaceful and optimistic reality, where war is a memory. This point was made all the more poignant by the fact that students worked on the same images they were presented in session 1, having the opportunity to change the narrative, so to speak.
In a language learning setting, Europeana resources offer educators the opportunity to insert an element of reality in the classroom, provide opportunities for further research and boost inter-cultural awareness and understanding.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z-FdXZMQaje_HW1RoB_TnS-DQSyKZdNs/view?usp=drive_link
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? Link to the learning scenario implemented: A Soldier’s Perspective of War.
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 Deutsche Fotothek.