Wednesday 8 October 2014

A new project has been launched!


It is this time of the school year that I have been thinking what kind of a project I could run with my students, B1+ level. And then Patty Salguero came along and suggested that our classes collaborate on an Art project. All our students have something in common. They love drawing! So, we thought of letting our students express themselves on a topic through Art. You can imagine how excited I got! Over the moon, I must admit…
We have chosen Picasso’s painting Guernica to introduce them to the topic of ‘War’. We will expand on the topic and ,as an outcome , we will have our students draw their thoughts, feelings and impressions on a large cardboard. It will be more like a collage.
Apart from the famous painting , I am thinking of using work from Music and Literature as sources of thought- provoking elaboration so that more Arts can contribute. 
But first things first… In our last lesson I asked my students if they would like to participate in a project like this. I didn’t have to convince them. The thought that they can collaborate with Peruvian students of their age was enough to get them thrilled ! It was the triggering event to introduce the topic. For the next 10 minutes they came up with words and phrases associated with war. The question was “What do you think when you hear the word “war”?
All the words were gathered in a mind map which can be edited throughout the project.
I have already shared the image with Patty in Dropbox so that she could share it with her students, talk about it,  they can edit it, add more thoughts and expand  on the topic. 





It is one way of asynchronous communication because we have to think of our time zones and the time of our lessons. We will try, of course, to have a live talk so that our students have the chance to speak to each other and exchange information about their countries and hometowns, talk about themselves, their interests and hobbies.
This is for now… Not much but the step has already been made and I am
sure this will lead us to an extraordinary journey!

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