lesson plan
Citizenship - Explore & Be(come) Yourself
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This lesson serie focuses on Citizenship, but you can easily change the subject to a different subject of your choice. Explore & Be(come) Yourself is an integral method that provides space in regular education for personal development, spoken and written language, play, movement, imagination and presentation. This is done in conjunction with all the subjects that are dealt with in education.
Arnon Grunberg, the initiator of the Hermann & Hannelore Grünberg Foundation, co-created the Grunberg Academy to challenge children/young people to push the limits of their ability to express themselves. This will give them the opportunity to increase their self-confidence and learn to shape their own lives in a constructive way.
Inviting teachers to embark on an adventure bringing their students in contact with their capacities to grow and be themselves in confidence.
Before we get started
Have a look at this overview and the attached worksheet before you start the lesson, the basis is always a trilogy:
The Citizenship class series consists of seven lessons of a minimum of 300 minutes all together:
The first lesson, 60/50 minutes, consists of the starting exercises (20 minutes) and the personal experience up to and including writing the first version of your story (40/30 minutes);
The second lesson is 30/60 minutes to complete the personal experience;
The third lesson consists of the knowledge activities and may take 60/50 minutes. It is possible to allocate more time;
The fourth lesson consists of the practical application activities and can last 60/50 minutes;
The fifth lesson is devoted to the presentation, 60/50 minutes;
The sixth lesson is the reflection, 30 minutes;
The seventh lesson is an evaluation after one to three months, 30 minutes;
The time schedule for these seven lessons is the minimum time. It is up to the facilitator, the learning objectives and the school program to extend the time and include more appropriate activities. This lesson format is a process-oriented approach.
1. The person that speaks gets to finish without being interrumpted.
2. No comments, only questions.
3. Everything that is shared in the group stays in the group.
These are three basic groundrules, you can invite the group if they want to add anything. If you keep them visible it will be easy to just point to the rules without having to talk. You can use pictograms.
Start Exercises
What can you expect in the starting exercises?
Duration: 20 minutes
- Calm yourself - Breathing exercise
- Game with words and movement
- Trust your fellow citizen - Fall exercise
Which of these exercises would you like to do? Choose two out of the three exercises. Please note that at least one of the excerises is playfully connected to the subject as a pre-introduction.
Note: You are creating a group sensitivity and bonding as well as at the same time you are offering selfsupport excercises that are forever usefull. In the beginning, it might seem challenging but we all can use relaxation and playfulness. As a preparation think of an experience from your childhood being part of a game in a circle. Try it out with a friend(s) or family. It enhances your courage.
TrIlogy: personal experience, knowledge, practical application
Preparing the necessary papers:
- Use a office format paper to create space for the work of the participant. In the middle draw a square for the image.
- The paper that you will handout as a list is very small a quarter of the A6 format.
- The paper you will handout for the text will be the size of the room below the square on the trilogy paper.
Note: If you want to work digitally you can create a digital-trilogy format. The sizes are helpful tools in organization.
Personal experience
Duration: 45 minutes
- Share - The facilitator prepares an experience from his own life.
- The invite - The facilitator prepares a question to invite the participants to remember their experiences, choose one and then share their experiences in pairs.
- Writing assignment.
- Image assignment.
Knowledge
Duration: 75 minutes
- Collecting and mapping previous knowledge and awakening of interest on the subject.
- Questions, research and intermittent presentation.
Practical application and presentation
Duration: 180 minutes
Connecting new and older knowledge with experience.
- Prepare questions for an interview.
- Find someone to interview that came to live in a new place, the place you call your city, village, state or country.
- Create a format to present your interview.
- Design a presentation.
Note: The personal experience part of the trilogy is probably the most challenging. To encourage and invite others to share their personal experience, we give you a few hints:
- It is important to stick to questions that are connected with the personal experience.
- The person that shares his experience is the owner of the story and questions can only be asked to get more information or to clarify what remained unclear.
- No interrumptions and comments are allowed.
- It can happen that participants are not used to ask questions. Then it is important to take time to help them to discover how they can formulate questions.
The facilitator sets the example with a personal experience. In the beginning this might seem uncomfortable but if you keep to the groundrules you will experience that by choosing your form to express your experience you are not only a model for your participants, but you can also grow yourself in wording your experience and your replies. The same happens with the participants. There is never a unequivocal way of telling a story and answering a question. To bring your participants to the point of realizing this truth is an important goal by which personal growth is enhanced.
Choose your experience by thinking of a theme that is connected with the participants of your class. In this case: The experiences of being in or out of a group.
Prepare your experience at home and share it with someone. It is important that you share the parts of your experience without cutting it short and choosing your details in such a way that you cater to your audience. You tell your story from start to finish.
When you are finished your listener can ask questions to get more information or to clarify. Then create a question to invite your participants. In this case: Who wants to share an experience about being in a group or about not feeling so much part of a group or even being excluded from a group?
For the knowledge and practical part of the trilogy: As a facilitator you facilitate the process and you represent a group by yourself so you can always influence the outcome. You can choose to include information and excercises of your teaching modules, do extended research and to look up sources. For example: podcasts, documentaries, movies, Spotify, etc.
As soon as it is possible invite participants to do research and present the results. There are many possible options. For the practical integration of - older & newer knowledge and shared experience - the assignments can be given to go outside the classroom. Visiting an organization, conducting an interview, writing an essay, making a clip or podcast. It can be either a smaller assignment or a larger one.
Reflection & Decision
What can you expect during reflection and decision?
Duration: 10+ minutes
Taking a decision for your own life.
- How does the class experience affect your life?
- In what way did it make you think about the topic?
Note: If desicions in daily life are part of this process, it is advised to make some time in the future to reflect on the new experiences. Not everyone has to come to a practical implementation, it sometimes might apply only to a few participants.
Evaluation & New subject
What can you expect during the evaluation?
Duration: 10 minutes
Take time to evaluate.
- The class – finding a new topic.
- After having implemented the decision.
Note: Invite participantes to give a presentation on their findings later on. By listening to their responses, you can find a new topic that fits both a topic of your curriculum and the participants.
This makes the educational experience inclusive for all your participantes.
The collection of all the trilogies that participants create during a year will represent their personal development in many ways. It allows participants to be concious of their own experiences and growth; strenghten them for life.
