This post is a report on a recent classroom project we had on refugees with a mixed ability A2 group of twenty-five 12 year old students. The aims were to build thoughtful awareness, encourage empathy on the issue, foster open-mindedness and respect for others, and keep refugees from seeming foreign and distant.
Students observed closely and described, wondered and asked questions, sought answers, responded to a short video, engaged meaningfully with a poem with a focus on capturing “what spoke to them”, recited poetry, made a class recording, and summarised the essence of the topic in verbal and non verbal ways. They also practised refugee related vocabulary, present tense, past continuous, past simple, and used to through reading, writing, listening, watching, speaking, and note taking.
The source material used was:
- an illustration for World Refugee Day 2011 by Hanane Kai
- Lior Sperandeo’s video “People of nowhere”
- the poem “Here I am” by Electra Alexandropoulou
Session 1 – Introducing the topic/Looking 10×2
We first had a look at an illustration for World Refugee Day by Hanane Kai, a graphic designer. I asked students to:
1. Look carefully at the painting for 30”
2. Make a list of up to 10 words or phrases about any aspect of what they saw
We shared ideas. Students stood up and wrote their words or phrases on a piece of construction paper we had stuck on the classroom wall. They also kept notes of all the responses shared.
Then, we repeated steps 1 and 2 adding some more words and phrases.
We used a concept map (circle map) to document our responses. Red marker was used for the words and phrases the students came up with when we repeated steps 1 and 2.
I then wrote on the board: What questions do you want to ask about refugees? We brainstormed some questions and recorded them. Students were assigned to:
a. Write a short paragraph reflecting on the classroom experience: What we did, what we saw, what we talked about.
b. work on the question/s of their choice
Session 2 – Reporting back
During the reporting stage, they presented their answers, answered their classmates’ questions and took notes of the responses shared in class. We kept a visible record of all the answers shared in a diagram.
We then had a look and read the following slide with the definitions of “Refugee”, “Asylum-seeker”, and “Immigrant”.
Students were assigned as homework to write a short text based on the classroom discussion and the notes they kept.
Session 3 – People of nowhere
We worked on Lior Sperandeo’s video “People of nowhere”. First, I played the film, sound only, and asked students to close their eyes and listen to the music. I then invited them to respond to the question:
What did you “see” in your mind’s eye while listening?
We shared our responses and then listened to the music again. This time I asked them:
How did you feel while listening to the music?
We shared ideas again.
I then told students that:
a. We were going to watch the video.
b. After watching they would have to write down as many visual details as they could remember.
Ideas shared:
As a homework assignment I asked them to write a a short text, describing the video. I also asked them to reflect on the question: Are your feelings after watching the video the same or different?
Session 4 – Here I am
We worked on the poem “Here I am” by Electra Alexandropoulou. It is a powerful poem, written in the first person where the refugee persona describes his/her current situation and recalls the past. You can find the poem as a scribd document here.
I first drew children’s attention to the geographic glossary I had included at the end of the poem handout. It is not a difficult poem in terms of language, but there is a number of references to places, cities and rivers they were unfamiliar with. We traced them with the help of a world map.
Then, I read the whole poem aloud to the students so that they could get more of a “feel” for the text. This had a powerful effect on them. The class was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. We then worked on the new vocabulary. Finally, children did some silent reading themselves and took turns reading it aloud in class.
As a homework assignment I asked them to do some more reading of the poem and write sentences about:
the things the refugees used to do in the past
their present situation
Session 5 – The tree of past and present
Feedback was given in the form of a plenary discussion where individual students read their sentences and the rest of the class took notes. We kept a visible record of the sentences shared in class and in the end we added the drawing of the blossomed and dry tree.
I assigned as a homework to:
choose a line/phrase/word from the poem that struck them as powerful and important and explain why.
Session 6- Line-Phrase-Word
Students shared their choices of lines/phrases/words explaining why. We kept the ideas shared visible.
Session 7 – A class recording
In this session we had a final reflection on the poem which had a great impact on the students. The idea of attempting a class recording was discussed in a previous session. We tried it with enthusiasm. You can listen to it here.
The project was coming to an end. I asked them to think of all the ideas shared and imagine they were reporters writing an article about refugees.
What would the headline be?
I also asked them: if you were to offer a drawing to a refugee child what would you draw?
Session 8-Headlines & hopeful drawings
The children responded not only with headlines. A few of them also attempted short articles to go with them. Here are some of their ideas:
And here some of their drawings for refugee children:
Acknowledgements
The poem “Here I am” is included in the book “The Coldest Summer” issued by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. The book presents the stories of 3 refugees fleeing into Europe, their nightmare, hopes and fears, sketched as a graphic narrative. Here is the link to download the book http://rosalux.gr/sites/default/files/publications/migration_comic_en_.pdf
The saw-felt activity in session 3 as well as the visual details activity in the same session were adapted from two activities (Memory Game & See-hear-feel) in Kieran Donaghy’s excellent book Film in Action: Teaching language using moving images (Delta Publishing).
Thanks to Torn Halves for bringing to my attention the video “People of nowhere”.
The thinking routines used in this project were: Looking 10×2, Line-phrase-word, and Headlines. You can read more about them here, here, and here.
While setting up this project I came across these interesting links on refugees
http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/refugees/
Syrian Refugees interactive timeline
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/may/25/how-to-teach-refugees
http://www.unhcr.org/465164ae2.html
http://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/Teaching-resources/Lesson-plans/Refugees-secondary
Unit plan for ages 15-18 in Language & Literature: The Depiction of Refugee Experience in Literature
Art Least 
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