Based on the teaching scenario of Experimental Junior High-School of University of Crete, Rethymno. See Anthology (pp. 187-190)

Categories: Passages and Identities / Being different from & and similar to others / Roots, Family & Community Bonds

Linguistic competence: Beginners – Advanced

Ages: 12 - 18 years old

Objectives

  • To recognize the term transition (from village to city, from one area/country to another, from living alone or with your family to married life etc.)
  • To learn how to collect and narrate personal and family stories
  • To compare my stories with the stories of others
  • To recognize similarities among people and their stories
  • To discover the "other"
  • To express opinions

Time: 6 teaching hours

Materials

Key points of activity development

Tips
  • In relevant activities where children are asked to report their experiences, personal involvement is required. Personal examples are strongly suggested.
  • I accept any choices children make about their identity, even if these may not be true.
  • I use other communication languages if I have a population that does not speak the language of the host country. Obviously I encourage students to write in whatever language they want.
  • We seek to use media other than language (music and images).
Adjustments
  • I select the individual activities according to the conditions that are gradually being formed (time, emerging elements, response and children's ideas.
Connection to school lessons
  • The scenario in an expanded version can be developed into a project, either in the course of Research Projects (Greek curriculum) or in courses such as Fine Arts, Music, Literature, Social & Political Education or Language, as an extracurricular cultural program. In this case, students are more systematically urged to research, to conduct interviews, receive oral and written material from various sources and a variety of text genres in order to present it at an event. The teacher monitors tasks, discusses problems, supports and encourages them.
  • This version uses ICT more systematically and the school is more closely linked to students' day-to-day practices in a globalized communication environment.
  • If I choose to integrate the activity into a language course, I can focus on highlighting the features of multimodal speech: widespread use of other modes than language (image, music, charts, etc.), organizing information in space (and not in time, as in purely linguistic texts).
  • At the same time, especially for children on the move, I can integrate the activity into teaching the language of my host country by asking simple questions and using simple vocabulary.
  • I can integrate the activity into the Geography lesson by approaching the concept of geographic transition. Likewise, I can integrate the activity into the course of History or the Social Sciences, by linking demographic change and historical events, promoting historical critical thinking (linking the present with the past).

What do I gain?
The participants of Backpack ID talk about their experience: Why this project is so special? What it meant to them /their pupils? Why you should use this material? What have they and their pupils learned? What works? etc. Watch their videos.

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