Welcome Judges

Teaching English Outside the Box: The Museum Experience

Nomination Description

Schiller

Foreign Language Schools

 

 

                                                                                    The Museum Experience

April-May 2024, Rethymno, Crete

Level of learners: A2 (CERF)

Inspired by a lesson from students’ course book about museums, this project was an idea of teachers in our school who are keen on history and archaeology and wanted to spread their enthusiasm in class. As we wanted it to be a full museum experience, it was divided into 3 stages: The pre-stage (before the visit to the museum), the while-stage (during the visit) and the post-stage (after the visit). During the whole process learners interacted with English language in unique ways!

The pre-stage: Intrigue

First, students were shown a picture of an artifact in class and were asked to find information about it. At that point, they had no idea that the picture depicted an artifact exhibited in the Museum of ancient Eleutherna. They used Google lens and soon found interesting facts about the specific exhibit, which had actually inspired the logo of the museum. Then, students visited and explored the online site of the museum in class, in English version (https://mae.uoc.gr/), so they read and learnt different kinds of information about it! Finally, each student was given a picture of a random exhibit of the museum and was asked to depict it on paper and write a few things about what it might have been or used for thousands of years ago in the ancient city of Eleutherna. They all came up with quite a few interesting ideas! At that point, everyone was excited to hear that our school was planning a trip to the museum!

The while-stage: Involve

The day of our trip had finally arrived! During the 30-minute-bus ride to the museum, our licensed English-speaking guide shared a lot of interesting facts about the ancient city of Eleutherna. On arrival, students were encouraged to explore the museum. Having the depictions of ‘their’ exhibit with them, students tried to spot it in the 3 Rooms of the museum and check if they had made the right guess about it by collecting information from the labels. Then, the tour started! Our guide had adjusted the information she shared with students to their age and focused on things that would probably interest them more. During the tour, students interacted with her and asked all kinds of questions! They also got the chance to write comments on their experience in the museum guest book.

On the way back, the tour guide was asked more questions by students who were now interested in finding out information about her work and how she decided to become a tour guide, giving her the chance to share her experience and stress the importance of learning foreign languages!

The post-stage: Inspire

Back to class, students took a fun quiz, ‘The Museum and the city of ancient Eleutherna in numbers’, which was answered through discussion and provided them with more ideas for the last part of our project. For their final oral exam at the end of the school year, students became more creative than ever preparing and presenting projects in class on anything that had impressed them the most during their experience!

Our students’ true enthusiasm for everything they experienced and learnt through this ‘Museum Experience’ is what set a challenge for us teachers to come up with more ideas for teaching English through meaningful, out-of-the-box activities, projects, events, trips!