Title: Everyone has their talents

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Maciejak

Topic:

Parable of talents. Discovering own strengths.

Target group

6th‑grade students of an elementary school.

Core curriculum

I. Literary and cultural education.

1. Reading literary compositions Student:

3) recognises the read literary compositions as a tale, legend, hymn, parable, myth, story, short story, diary or novel and indicates its genre features; distinguishes the types of novels and stories i.e. of manners, adventurous, detective, science‑fiction, fantasy;

4) knows and recognises in the literary text: epithet, metaphor, comparison, onomatopoeic words, diminution, exaggeration, personification, animation, apostrophe, anaphora, rhetorical question, repetition and defines their function;

7) talks about the events of the plot, sets the order of events and understands their interdependency;

9) describes the lyrical subject, narrator and characters in the read literary compositions;

14) names the impressions aroused by a given text;

15) explains literary and metaphoric meanings;

16) specifies the experiences of the literary characters and compares them with his own;

17) demonstrates his own understanding of the literary text and can justify it;

19) expresses his own opinion on characters and events;

20) indicates values in the literary work and defines values that are important to the character.

2. Reception of the cultural texts. Student:

2) finds directly and non‑directly (hidden) expressed messages in the text.

3) specifies the topic and the main theme of the text;

11) refers to the content of the cultural texts to his own experiences;

II. Language skills.

2. Language differentiation. Student:

2) uses the official and unofficial variation of Polish;

3) uses a style appropriate to the communication situation;

4) understands the literal and metaphorical meaning of the words in a statement; recognises the ambiguous words, understands their meaning in a text and consciously uses them to create his own statements.

6) recognizes neutral and evaluative vocabulary, understands their functions in the text;;

7) uses a style appropriate to the intended purpose of communication;

8) distinguishes synonyms, antonyms, understands their function in the text and uses in his own statements;

III. Creating expressions

1. Elements of rhetoric Student:

1) takes part in a discussion on a given topic, can separate its parts and structural signals strengthening the bond among the participants of the dialogue and explaining the meaning;

3) creates logical, semantically complete and structured statement, using composition and layout adequate to the given genre, understands the role of paragraphs in creating consistent statement;

4) selects information;

2. Speaking and writing Student:

4) creates notes

5) talks about the read text

IV. Self‑education. Student:

1) perfects loud and silent reading;

2) perfects different forms of writing down the gained information;

3) uses information from different sources, gathers and selects information;

5) uses Polish language dictionaries, both general and specific and the dictionary of literary terms;

9) develops the ability to use the information technology and the Internet resources effectively and uses these skills to present his own interests.

The general aim of education

Students analyse the behaviour of characters from the parable and read the symbolic meaning of the text.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• communication in foreign languages;

• learning to learn;

• social and civic competences.

Operational objectives

Student:

• descibes the features of a parable;

• reads the metaphorical meaning of the text;

• explains different meanings of the word talent.

Methods/techniques

• problematic: conversation;

• practical: exercises on the subject;

• programmed: using the computer, using e‑textbook.

Forms of work

• uniform individual activity;

• work in pairs;

• collective activity;

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the aim of the class: recognising and characterising talents of you own and others, and learning about the biblical parable about talents.

2. The teacher asks pupils to talk in pairs about their talents and the talents of their colleagues. Who do you consider particularly talented?

Realization

1. The teacher suggests a game – everyone chooses one person from the class and on a piece of paper describes him/her in a few sentences concentrating on their talents and skills. The teacher encourages the students to pay attention not only to the “typical” talents, but also less obvious abilities like for example the ability to listen to other people or problem‑solving. After that students exchange their sheets and try to guess who is described.

2. Determining the features of the parable. The teacher asks students what kind of classes they have met with the literary genre – a parable? (religion) What parables do you know? Reading the text of the parable on talents from the e‑manual and determining the characteristics of the genre.

3. Analysis of the text of the parable. Reading the meanings and symbols in the parable. Explanation of the meaning of the biblical word TALENT. Students search the Internet for the meaning of the word TALENT in antiquity, they convert the value of money in relation to modern times. They perform task No. 3, which consists in supplementing the table with relevant information regarding the behavior of individual servants. Students answer questions:

• Who does symbolise Lord? (God)

• Who are the servants? (people)

• What does Lord give the servants?

• Why does he give ones more, others less?

• How do the servants use the gifts received?

• Why did the Lord get angry? How did he punish the servants?

4. The teacher asks the question: How do people use their talents today? Students perform interactive task No. 2, match the surname and the talent to the picture of a particular person.

Summary

The teacher asks the selected student / students to summarise the lesson and answer the question:

• What is the symbolic meaning of the parable?

Homework

Think about what you like to do, what hobby you have, what you're good at. Write in points how you develop your skills or talents.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Everyone has got talents

Talk in pairs, what does the word „talent” mean to each of you? What talents many people have? Who, according to you, is really talented? Do you have any talents?

The parable is a short story ending with a moral. It is characterised by a simplified plot and schematic heroes, the narrator speaks usually in third person and he is objective. We read the parable as the metaphorical story, it often contains allegories or symbols. Biblical parables are the best known.