Implementation of ‘Letters and Postcards from War Times’ (SOI-HU-03)
Choosing the LS
I chose this Learning Scenario because I could easily fit it into my curriculum. I used only a little part of it. My students read a letter from WWI, designed a postcard and wrote their answers in English to the letter. This took them 2 times 45 minutes.
Getting ready
Before I started the lessons, I searched the Europeana Collections for a letter written in English from WWI that my students could read and more or less understand. I kept the original idea of writing a postcard and created a short presentation about them. I collected pictures of older and newer postcards.
Introduction of the topic
Because they have just finished studying about WWI, I did not really need to explain them the background of the war. We mostly talked about the author of the letter. Then we read the letter and discussed about it to help them better understand. Then we went through the short presentation about postcards. We discussed how both sides look like and how much they can write. Then, in small groups, they started with the task.
Changes
This group’s proficiency of English is limited, therefore I thought writing a full letter would be challenging for them. That is why they only wrote a postcard.
Originally I had planned for this activity to last for 45 minutes only, but groups were not done with their postcards, therefore another 45 minutes was necessary.
They enjoyed the work very much.
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