Title: The adventures of the time traveller: destination – future!

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Maciejak

Topic:

The adventures of the time traveller: destination – future!

Target group:

8th‑grade students of an elementary school.

Core curriculum

I. Literary and cultural education.

1. Reading literary works. Student:

7) defines existential issues in the texts being studied and reflects them.

2. Receipt of cultural texts. Student:

1) searches for the necessary information in the text and cites relevant parts of journalistic, popular or scientific texts;

2) organises information depending on their function in the message;

7) finds in the texts of contemporary popular culture (eg in films, comics, songs) references to traditional literary and cultural themes.

III. Creating statements.

1. Elements of rhetoric. Student:

1) functionally uses rhetorical means and understands their impact on the recipient;

2) collects and organizes the material material needed to create statements; edits the compositional plan of his own statement;

3) creates a statement using the appropriate composition for a given form and the principles of linguistic consistency between paragraphs; understands the role of paragraphs as a coherent whole of thought in the creation of written utterances and applies the paragraph rhythm (interweaving of long and short paragraphs);

4) uses the knowledge of the principles of creating thesis and hypothesis and arguments in the creation of the essay and other argumentative texts;

5) differentiates the example from the argument;

6) carry out the inference as part of the argumentative argument;

7) agrees with other people's views or polemicizes with them, substantively justifying their own opinion.

2. Speaking and writing. Student:

2) perform transformations on someone else's text, including shortening, summarizing, expanding and paraphrasing.

IV. Self‑study. Student:

1) reliably, with respect for copyrights, uses information;

6) develops skills of independent presentation of the results of his work;

8) develops the ability to think critically and formulate opinions.

The general aim of education

Students analyse and interpret a fragment of science fiction novel.

Learning outcomes

Student:

• indicates literary works in which the theme of travel is realized;

• justifies his opinion;

• reads the meaning of a literary work;

• plays roles;

• organises chronologically learned school readings.

Teaching methods / techniques

• giving: talk;

• practical: elements of drama, subject exercises;

• exhibiting: recording;

• programmed: using a computer, using an e‑manual.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• collective activity.

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher determines the purpose of the classes and gives the students criteria of success.

2. The teacher asks students what times they would like to move and why. He also asks how – in their opinion – such a trip would look like if it were possible.

Realization

1. Students talk in pairs about cultural texts in which time travel is mentioned. They write titles on the interactive board in the abstract.

2. The teacher talks briefly about Herbert George Wells. Students read a fragment of his novel Fri. „Time machine”, and then perform an interactive task, in which you must evaluate the accuracy of the information provided.

3. The teacher begins a conversation about the emotions that accompanied the hero of the text, and encourages students to perform an interactive task of storing the hero's emotions in the table during the journey and after stopping the vehicle and supporting their sentences with appropriate quotes.

4. The students themselves formulate questions that would be worthwhile to ask the traveler in time, then share their ideas on the class forum.

5. The teacher displays the previously prepared fragment of the film titled Fri. „Les Visiteurs” (he/she should choose a fragment that presents the confusion of travelers from the past in modern times resulting from a lack of knowledge about objects that they do not know), and they invent inventions that surprised the visitors from the past. The teacher encourages discussion of the effect achieved by placing the twelfth knight and his squire in the 20th century.

6. The students, on the basis of pre‑prepared questions, conduct an interview between them (one person takes on the role of a traveler and the other – a journalist). The teacher reminds journalists about inquisitiveness while asking questions, and the travelers – about showing expression and preservation of authenticity.

7. The teacher proposes to carry out an interactive task, in which the literary texts already known should be sorted in the order in which they were created. If the students worked with a different reading set, the teacher can freely exchange the titles of the works.

Summary

The teacher gives students short surveys with self‑evaluation.

Then he/she summarises the class by asking students questions:

• Why the theme of time travel has become so popular in 20th century literature?

• How were the emotions of the Time Machine hero described ?

Homework

Imagine that you have moved into the future for some time. Write a story in which you'll talk about what the world you are looking for looks like.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

The adventures of the time traveller: destination – future!

Dreams about travels in time express one of the eternal longing of a humankind. Overcoming the constraints of time, learning about the future, changing the past – over the centuries such desires have taken different forms. With the development of science and technology, these dreams gained a new strength. The examples of this inspiring influence can be found in many cultural texts of the 20th century. The writers and later, the film directors, dealt with the time travel theme very often. They used it not only for the pure entertainment purposes, but also, as a starting point for the reflections on society, civilization and on the human existence entanglement in time. The literary pioneer of this topic, and a patron of many later stories about time travel, is Herbert George Wells, who at the end of the 19th century published the famous Time Machine.

Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer who became famous as the author of the science‑fiction pieces. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of the contemporary science‑fiction literature. The most famous novels by him are: Time Machine (1895), Dr Moreau Island (1896), Invisible Man (1897), War of the Worlds (1898). Many times his works were adapted to the screen, and they became the inspiration for the artistic projects in other media.