The following lesson is one that I did with most of my classes this semester, and it worked quite well in all of them. After trying it out once, I shared it with 2 of my co-teachers, Dan Deacon and Joseph Doucette, to see if it would work for other teachers too, and both said it increased participation and interest in the class. The lesson plan below is fairly detailed and the result of trial and error (especially in deciding where to pause the video for clarification discussions). Changes made along the way will be explained in the discussion afterwards.
Goals
The video has so much meaning and language that a variety of goals can be achieved by watching it with students. This paper is focused on the critical reading aspect, but I'll briefly mention other possible objectives, too.
- Exposure to unfamiliar accents: The students are confronted with both an Irish and a African accent, neither of which is familiar to most Korean students. As the narrative is quite visual, it is fairly easy to understand for even beginner-level students, but understanding the language intensifies the impact and also the emotional involvement of the students.
- Pragmatics: Since the video wasn't made with ESL learners in mind, dialogue is often imbedded with meanings that are obscure to someone from a different cultural background (see Christian Kelly, “Do they know it's Christmas?”) As the story progresses and themes are established, student schemata are created and the story gradually becomes more comprehensible, which increases the enjoyment.
- Fun: Most classes (and I dare say most students!) were visibly engaged with the story, and as a result didn't view the explanations and discussion so much as a lesson, but a part of watching the movie.
- Introduction to critical reading: Discussing the different characters and guessing at their future actions are low risk ways to engage the students, but also to give them a chance to give their different opinions. Care should be taken to explore every possibly valid suggestion by a student, as the point here is not whether it fits in with the ultimate conclusion of the story, but making it clear that people view other people and their actions in different ways, and that it is okay to speculate and be wrong sometimes. Here it is also helpful if the teacher admits to having been fooled by the build-up, too.
Lesson Plan
The lesson uses “New Boy” , a short movie by Steph Green based on a story by Roddy Doyle.
Introduction:
1. Write “New Boy” on the board and ask students to guess at the meaning.
2. Students discuss how it feels to be new at school, and what problems new boys and girls have. Vocabulary is provided as necessary, but prompt students in the direction of “bully” and “clique” if they don't arrive there by themselves.
3. Make it clear to the students that the accents will be difficult at first, and that understanding them will become easier as they get used to it.
Watching the movie:
To follow this lesson plan, it is best to be exact in pausing the movie, as some transitions happen very quickly and the element of surprise is quite easily lost.
1. Watch 0.0 to 1:17: Why did the one boy suggest Joseph should sit next to Pamela?
Why did the teacher tell the students to put their hands in the air?
What did Seth Quinn do with the small boy’s book? What do you
think about Seth?
2. Watch 1:17 to 2:05: How is Joseph's old school different from the new school? How are the
students' attitudes different?
What does Christian Kelly ask Joseph? What does it mean? (Students
commonly think it is a question about cultural differences, so a brief
explanation of the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid will probably be
necessary, after which students can discuss the real meaning of
Christian's question.)
What did Hazel tell the teacher? (Explain “poking”)
3. Watch 2:05 to 4:20: Who was Joseph's teacher in Africa really? (His father)
What did they talk about? (a soccer game, Joseph scored 3 goals in the
last game, he's a star, etc.)
What does Christian say to Joseph about Hazel? (“Speccy fancies you.
You're dead!”) How does Joseph react to this?
4. Watch 4:20 to 5:58: What did Christian say to Joseph? (“Are you hungry? Chew on this!”) How is this related to Christian's previous comment?
What happened next? What would you have done if you were
Joseph?
What did Seth Quinn say to the other boys? (“I seen her knickers”:
see discussion) What do you think about this kind of behavior?
5. Explain to students that everything up to this point will now be watched again to allow them to see the bigger picture. Watch 0:24 to 5:58, then let the students discuss the following questions.:
1. What do you think about Joseph? How is his behavior different in the new school?
2. What do you think about Hazel? ( Good chance to introduce new vocabulary such as “teacher's pet” and “telling on someone”, etc.)
3. What do you think about Christian Kelly?
4. What's going to happen next?
6. Explain to students that the rest of the movie will be watched without interruptions, but that the class will go back afterwards to look at individual utterances. Watch 5:58 to 9:40 (the end).
7. Discuss the following questions:
1. What had happened to Joseph's father? How did this affect Joseph's life?
2. Why did Hazel come out of the classroom to speak to the teacher? How did the teacher respond?
3. What did Hazel say as she was walking back into the class that made the teacher angry? What did Seth Quinn say to Joseph and Christian? What did Joseph say?
4. What do you think about the children now? What's going to happen after the story?
5. What do you think about the teacher?
Homework: Watch the movie again and write a letter to Joseph.
Reflection
The lesson worked quite well from the first time I tried it, but there were a few issues that had to be addressed at times. I'll briefly summarize them over the next few paragraphs.
The movie navigates us through a day of the lives of several children, central of whom is Joseph, a Rwandan refugee in his first day in class in Ireland
The first problem that arose was the density of the dialogue in parts of the movie. Since the characters spoke at normal speeds in what constituted difficult accents for the students, often using using idiomatic language, a lot more time had to be spent replaying crucial parts to prepare the students for the 2nd half of the movie. This was of course a blessing in disguise in terms of listening practice, but the extra energy spent on comprehension took its toll for the beginner level students, and in one class there was a clear drop in engagement after the first half of the movie.
The language also included some crude expressions, which made it important for me to make it clear that I was not teaching this language for usage but for comprehension. Some of these were shocking for the students but easy to explain in context (Hazel calling the teacher “a bitch” and Seth saying the teacher “thinks she's robbin' a fockin' bank”), but the “seen her knickers” -scene was more problematic. At first I just didn't highlight it as the screen class's attitude towards the teacher / authority was by that time clear, but there were a few fairly fluent speakers of English in 2 or 3 of the first classes, and a few of them mistook “knickers” for a racial epithet. The first time it happened, I just explained it to the individual student, but the second time I went back and verbally transcribed the whole scene for the class, tying it in to the contrast in class cultures between the Irish and Rwandan school. It certainly amplified the students' awareness of the cultural change that Joseph had to deal with, but it also took more time. I probably wouldn't cover it in future if I were to do beginner-level classes, but for mixed or higher levels doing it might be unavoidable.
There was no significant resistance from the students, but some of the beginner-level students seemed to suffer from information overload towards the end of it. In spite of that, the result was in line with the stated objective of providing a topic for discussion that didn't carry risk along with the necessary potential for disagreement. Students responded with some very negative comments about the actions of some characters, but some others contradicted these without seeming concerned about public opinion in the class. Whether this was due to the lesson or not is debatable, but it established that the foundation for further critical lessons was in place.
The stimulus towards critical reading happened in 2 places; at the end of the first period with Joseph on his way to the playground, and at the end of the movie with the situation resolved and the transition complete. After the events before break time, several students were able to predict a fight later on, but no one in my classes imagined Hazel standing up to the teacher the way she did, nor the ease with and the manner in which Christian and Seth accepted Joseph in the end. This situation in which many people were partially right but no one completely, created an atmosphere where speculation at the end was freer and opinions differed strongly, for example while discussing the teacher.
I didn't use the question about the future of the characters in class, but it was actually brought up in the homework by the students. After that, I used it as a question in the speaking exam (along with other questions discussing the story and the characters). Several students had opinions that were contrary to my intended reading, and a few came up with genuinely oppositional readings. One student who had lived in Canada told his exam partner that he had experienced the same kind of situation on account of being Asian, and that the teacher's apparently unbiased approach to the 3 boys was in fact proof of racism, as she had taken the boy whose book Seth had thrown out the window at his word. Another said that Joseph had made a mistake in becoming friends with Christian and Seth, as they “were bad boys” who would “make problems”.
In future, I would like to use this lesson as a springboard at the beginning of the semester, to launch the class into more difficult critical readings using short stories, newspaper articles or scenes from movies (Jack Bauer justifying torture on Fox springs to mind).
