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This
year in our class we have decided to deal with the themes
utopia and
dystopia. Our work has started with reading Huxley’s
novel“Brave New World”. This work has been a collaborative work, because
we have developed it with a German class of Salingen. The collaboration
hasn’t been only between us students but also between the teachers,
Daniela Ianni and Esther Drammer. In our opinion it is right to report
the layout of the project
derived from the letters that the
teachers have exchanged:
Steps
of the projects
step 1:
September - 31/10:
Students read the novel - either in class (Italians) or at home (Germans).
I would prefer this as a deadline, as it would give us the whole first
week of November for a discussion of the first chapters. My students
will be on holiday from 14/10 - 27/10 and will have a written exam on
29/10, so 31/10 will be the first lesson on "Brave New World"
(BNW). 01/11 is a public holiday in Germany, and starting on 05/11 /which
is our first lesson in November)seems a bit late as it would mean that
there is not much room for a discussion of the first three chapters,
which I think is very important for my students.
step 2:
from/around 31/10:
Students discuss the following questions in the
forum
opened up by you:
- what I liked about the novel
- what I did not like about the novel
- questions/aspects/topics of interest
(you could open the forum earlier if your students want to go ahead with
the discussion, though. My students might join in while reading. On the
other hand I think that opening it very early might "stretch"
this step. What do you think?).
step 3: 04/11 - 08/11:
The students discuss the first three chapters in class (at least the
Germans - you might have done that when you read the chapters in class).
Meanwhile, the discussion(s) in the forum might go on and extend to a
more detailled discussion of chapters 1-3.
step 4: 11/11 - 15/11:
The students will work in mixed pairs (Italian, German) or small groups
on individual chapters, some will have two shorter ones -.
In this phase they could use only email because each single pair must
have a separate way of communication in order to build an analyses of
the chapter and mediate/negotiate a final written work containing the
summary of events, comments on the characters involved, the function of
the chapter within the context of the whole story.They should have
completed a collaborative text or webpage by 15/11, which is to be
published either in the forum (if it still has to be corrected by us) or
on your website (if it's perfect; probably we should wait until the end
of the project before we publish something "officially"; some
things, especially the description of the main characters, might be
redundant in the end)
I think both ways of working on the chapters you suggest should be
allowed:
"It might consist in exchanging what each single member of the pair/group
will develop following the scheme/form we (the teachers) will devise to
guide them, and then trying to merge them by exchanging and refining
proposals.
In alternative to this, each member of the pairs/groups might decide to
choose some points to develop and then collect them in a unique work,
finally exchange proposals for improving each part".
As we have never done a project like that, I think it should be up to
the students to find the best way of negotiating things and of working
together. They might find that splitting up on certain aspects (e.g. if
there are a lot of different characters in their chapter) might be a
good idea, while they might want to discuss other aspects in detail
before they both start to write a text on it, compare their texts and
turn it into one.
They could evaluate the methods used afterwards and tell us about their
experiences and the pros and cons.
step 5: 18/11 - 29/11:
We could reuse the forum to discuss various aspects of the novel, as you
suggest. At that stage, however, I think that discussions may become a
bit superficial after a while ("I think.." - "I agree......."
- "I disagree.......", especially if we keep them going for
two weeks. What I hope (or what we could initiate) is that some of the
discussions might lead to little groups who find that they would like to
go into more detail, investigate background information, elaborate on
ideas, etc. So this could be a mixture of our ideas (forum/group work).
What I would really like my students to do is to analyse some aspects in
more detail and to write at least one short text (essay, comment,
informational text, creative text) on a certain topic. I would also like
them to think about the utopian character of BNW, discuss other utopian
ideas and probably present their own ideas of a utopian society or a
better world. And I think that it might be quite interesting to exchange
ideas with your Italian students, because then it really makes sense to
use English as a lingua franca. And I would like them to write a bit
more than just a short startement (1-3 sentences) in the forum.
What to you think? Could this be possible?
step 6: 2/12 - ...
Towards the end of November we should evaluate the project on
various levels (German students-Italian students, students-teachers,
-teachers-teachers) and think about how to present it in the internet
(on your website). Maybe they would like to elaborate on some pages/texts
or create links between several of their pages.
I think this is nicer than just publishing the discussions in the forum.
And this is, more or less, what we
have done!!!!
On December each
Italian student has chosen one theme of the book for the
realization of an assignment. At last,
our final objective
has been
the creation of a
website in which we have inserted all our works.
GOOD
VISION!!!
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