What’s in a fairy tale?

This task is part of a larger task sequence aimed at exploring cross-disciplinary subjects of social sciences, language and intercultural awareness.


Students are given different texts to analyse in small online teams. The texts can be textbooks, children’ s stories, newspapers, ads. The aim of this s task is to encourage students to actively work towards critical awareness of social issues. To help achieve this, students analyse the different ways in which notions of citizenship are socially manipulated (e.g. fairy tales for small children that promote national identities, etc.). The students are asked to try to take on ‘ contrastive’ views by responding to the texts in ‘ roles’ .

Institution reporting the task:

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Language of task instructions:

None

Target Group:

Social sciences

Level:

B2

References and acknowledgements:

None

Type:

Collaborative tasks

Estimated Duration:

3 sessions

Topic:

Social Science, Political Science

Tags:

intercultural
cross-disciplinary

Acknowledgements:

Project based on original idea by Melinda Dooly (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, ES), Robert Foster (Edge Hill University, UK) and
Dorota Misiejuk (Uniwersytet w Bialymstoku, PL)


Title: Developing a world view of citizenship education in higher education programmes

Language Configurations:

Lingua Franca

Language(s) that the task can be used in:

Dominant language production:

Writing/reading asynchronous
Speaking/listening synchronous

Target Competences:

Language competence
Intercultural skills
Online communication skills
Media literacy

Specific pedagogical objectives:

Development of students analytical skills

Suggested Communication Tools:

Collaborative tools
Real time conferencing
Blogs

Suggested Resources:

None

Instructions:

Students are given different texts to analyse (one per virtual team). These can be textbooks, children’ s stories, newspapers, ads. In this task, students actively work towards critical awareness of social issues. Students analyse the different ways in which notions of citizenship are socially manipulated (e.g. fairy tales for small children that promote national identities, etc.). They try to take on ‘ contrastive’ views by responding to the texts in ‘ roles’ .


Step 1: Each virtual team is assigned a text to read before their virtual meeting. They are also assigned ‘ roles’ to respond to the texts (e.g. a member of a minority group from one of the countries, a legal resident, a non-legal resident, a different gender from one’ s own, etc.).


Step 2: The groups meet to discuss the texts (but they are not allowed to reveal their roles explicitly). Each team member should try to react to the discussion in a way they feel is coherent with their role. The discussion is limited to 15 minutes. When the time is up, the members should try to guess the role of the other.


Step 3: Students post their feelings about the discussion in the class wiki/forum/blog, etc.

Learner Texts:

Document related to the task:

None

Criteria for Completion:

This is part of a larger task sequence which has a final output. However, student participation and attitude during the collaboration can be assessed through peer evaluation (e.g. rubrics). Telecollaborative-Effective communicative skills can be assessed for development during the process (see e-portfolio, this website for ideas).

Comments and suggestions:

None

Author/copyright: