Citizenship In the Modern Languages Classroom - A Resource by SCIAF

Inspired by Lynne Horn I decided to bring a little bit of Congo to my classroom.

In a few short weeks I will lose my S2 class who will be split up according to their choices. No doubt some will have the dubious pleasure of me as their teacher for another 2 years, others will get off lightly. Anyway I was looking for something interesting to round off the term and I remembered Lynne blogging about a resource produced by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) "Citoyens du Monde - La Vie en RDC" aimed specifically at French classes which took a look at life in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This resource looks not only at learning a language but it gives scope for pupils to examine their thoughts and feelings about their lives both here in Scotland and in the DRC. It allows for pupils to express themselves in French but also in English when the concepts are perhaps beyond their capability in French.

This week was our first step on this journey. Having introduced them to DRC via my own knowledge and a trailer for a documentary I found on YouTube,

 the pupils had to answer a series of questions about themselves and life in Scotland. The questionnnaire is in 3 sections, the first of which my class was able to answer in French.

The other 2 sections asked deeper questions about pupils' hopes and aspirations such as what they would say to a world leader. These questions, I let them answer in English as I didn't want language to be a barrier to their thoughts.

I'd like to say that they all treated the exercise with due respect, but they are teenagers and some were not quite as serious as others. However I was pleased with what they came up with. As we had a sunny day on Wednesday I took the class outside, split them into 3 groups and gave each group a camera so that each pupil could record their thoughts. I wanted to do this because at the end of this project I want the students to revisit some of their answers to see if they have changed.

Anyway here is the resultant film. Some of the dialogue is difficult to make out due papers rustling and others chatting but I like what they came up with.

sciaf, citizenship, french, language, learning, drc, rdc, congo

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Comments

[Catriona Oates]

Hi adam, I really like your approach here - i'd be interested to know if you managed to make any curricular links with other subjects using the SCIAF resource? And I loved the way the films are real - I think that's what teachers need - REAL practice, not good practice! Give me a call if you can next week? And please join our glow group if you can!
Catriona

[Lynne]

Enjoyed hearing your thoughts and comments. Although we recorded the thoughts of Tobermory we had camera problems and couldn't get them to download. Enjoy the rest of your project!