MY CITY / MOJE MIASTO ACTIVITIES
~Newspaper collaging~
As part of an ongoing ‘My City’ learning module that I am developing and using this month at my job as English language teacher (with focus on speaking) at a Polish primary bilingual school, I did ‘Radom News’ collages in classes today.
Over breakfast at home this morning, my daughter made a collage that I used as a sample when I explained the activity to the class 1 students today.
During my lesson prep time this morning, I also made a collage that I used as an example for classes 1, 2 and 3 when explaining the activity to them.
I returned to the classroom at the beginning of this month for the first time in almost 15 years! I used to work regularly in classrooms and usually with kids with special education needs.
When the opportunity came up to teach English in a mainly conversational context at a local bilingual school, I saw it as a great opportunity for work with children (which I enjoy) as well as a way to engage with this community (that my family and I recently moved to).
Also, due to the somewhat unconventional role of being a primary school English teacher mainly focused on speaking, I saw an opportunity for a lot of creative and project-based activities around which conversation and speaking would naturally occur.
For me, this work is connected to my role as an urban researcher in connecting up all my different ‘silos’ of practice.
I envision a whole curriculum that is city and community immersed with materials provided by and engagement with various actors, organizations and entities of the city!
Today I took a step towards that reality locally by contacting the entity responsible for the production of the newspapers we were using for the activity and we’ll be meeting soon to discuss collaboration.
It was also great to establish a dialogue & relationship with the local tourist visitor office which provided maps for map art collages in my classes this month.
Looking forward to further bringing alive my urbanism engagement interests in my teaching approach!
The students loved the newspaper collaging activity! And a big thanks to the parent of a Class 1 student for providing stacks of newspapers for the activity!
-Annika
