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Cultural Vehicles in Education - assisting
the needs of vulnerable social groups
Pilot workshops
Grodzki Theatre Association
Educational Module
Name of didactic block - European culture
| Subject of the unit |
Competences (key Lisbon competences) |
Practical skills |
Pedagogical aim |
Methods |
Didactic materials |
Duration and date |
| History of Great Discoveries - navigare
necesse EST |
III
V
VIII |
III 3 Seeing science as a foundation of technology
V
2 Developing curiosity towards the world
VIII
7The ability to notice other nations and
cultures |
Group integration |
Exercises, working with a map, working with a
text, problem solving exercises |
Contemporary and historical sea maps, texts,
slides of sailing ships and sailing routs |
8 hours (8 x 45 minutes)
Two sessions
28.02.2008
19.06.2008
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I A description of the activities undertaken during
the unit, including comments on the reactions of the
group/individual participants
1. Great discoveries and the history of sailing. The
instructor gives basic information on discoveries and
discoverers (sailors) to the group. He discusses ‘the
newly found’ territories and countries (culture, language,
when it was first discovered by Europeans). He checks
the knowledge of the group, puts it in order together
with the participants and adds some information.
2. How did people sail in the old days? How do we sail
nowadays? The group leader talks about the rules of
operating sailing ships and points to differences in
sailing in the sea, lake and river. He underlines the
importance of team work = “the fate of the ship depends
on the crew”. He explains basic terms such as a course
following a compass, nautical mile, degree of longitude
and degree of latitude. He draws different winds and
talks about the rules of charting a sailing course.
3. Pair work. The participants are given photocopies
of maps of southern Baltic sea, rulers and protractors
and get a task to chart a course between £eba on the
Polish cost and Kalmar on the Scandinavian costs. The
instructor gives them additional information and assists
participants who have some problems with the task.
4. Winds and sailing courses. The instructor draws
and discusses different kinds of wind: variable wind,
cross wind, tailwind and headwind. He asks one of the
participant to sum up the information to make it easier
for the group to understand everything.
5. Pictures of sailing ships. The group looks at slides
of a variety of historical sailing ships. The leader
points to characteristic features of each of them.
Day 2
1. Revision of knowledge acquired during the first
day – a quiz. The instructor divides the group into
two competing teams. Each team receives a sheet with
some questions about Great Discoveries and the history
of sailing. The participants read out their answers.
Both groups win.
2. Pirates. The instructor hands out some information
on biographies of famous sailors. The participant read
out the information one by one, practicing public reading.
3. Dressing up as pirates. The instructor and the participants
have brought clothes and materials, which can be used
for pirate costumes. Everyone dresses up as pirate.
4. Preparing a sea scenery. The group makes a ship
out of chairs and prepares for singing traditional
Polish sailing songs.
5. The instructor hands out texts of songs. The group
practices singing with texts and then freely, with
no text.
II Was the aim of the unit achieved (the implementation
of practical skills and the pedagogical aim)?
Historical maps were used to present the Great Discoveries
in the 16th century, which allowed the group to understand
how much there was to discover. Learning to chart their
own sailing course in the sea was a very challenging
task with symbolic significance – sailing and great
discoveries relate to the self-discoveries and efforts
undertaken by the workshop participants. Although at
the beginning of the task the group panicked, through
pair work supervised by the instructor, every single
person drew their own sailing course and the atmosphere
at the end of the task was euphoric.
III Other remarks (for example on the interaction
between artistic and educational elements)
Using different elements of art (pictures of ships,
theatrical dressings up, singing) made the unit very
interesting and enjoyable for the participants. They
not only learned about historical facts (Great Discoveries,
biographies of sailors and pirates), but were also
able to relive and experience them though charting
their own ‘voyage’ through the Baltic sea and acting
out pirates. The instructor was a qualified sailing
instructor and he talked about the sea with real
passion, sharing many anecdotes with the group. The
participant asked him about possibilities of sailing
in their region and declared a will to do it as a
group.
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