ENGLISH AND CULTURE - A METHODOLOGY OF CULTURE FOR

TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN 27TH JULY- 07TH AUGUST , 2015
Last 26th of July, five teachers from IES Antonio Helln Costa set off to Dublin to
attend and take part in different courses related to English culture and improvement of
communicative competence in the language, fulfilling , with this, one of the objectives
of our Erasmus+ K1 project: Reduccin del abandono escolar a travs de la formacin
bilinge y didctica del profesorado.
The courses were held at Trinity College and we stayed on campus for a fortnight. It
was a great experience, like going to Uni again !
The course I had applied for, English and Culture, was focused on exploring Irish
culture and society as a context for producing teaching resources ( they would be very
useful for our teaching practice back in Spain) while developing communicative
competence in English.
Taking the role of a student and following an Inquiry-based approach and a cooperative
methodology based on Context4content we had to create a project on one of the
following specific topics:
Stained glass Art in Ireland
The Irish language
Dublin : One City, one Book
How could we do that?
To get to the outcome ( our project) we counted on some resources:
- Timetabled sessions , with time for practice , with relevant information provided.

Irish Poetry (Paula Meehan)

Creative writing

The Irish language

Stained glass workshop

-

Computer Room in Trinity College

ICT
teaching
-

Dublin city: people and buildings

Dublin Castle

Dublin Market

Merryon Park ( Oscar Wilde)

Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery today, a link with coursework on

W.B. Yeats(poet) & Harry Clarke ( stained glass artist)
-

Workshop for stained glass project ( carried out by Gerry OBrian, Dubliner
artist) If you are interested in his work ,you can find him in @gerrybobrien

Gerry OBrian . His work

Workshop . He showed us how he creates a

stained-glass window. It was amazing!!!
-

Meeting Lizz Coddy, a Dublin city librarian , who told us about the initiative
of Dublin City Council and led by Dublin City public libraries to encourage
people to read a book connected with Dublin. And it is very successful
throughout the country.
Also linked with this idea there is an initiative from schools to promote One city,
One Book and it is write here, write now For further reading, visit
www.dublinonecityonebook.ie

We found all this so exciting that we decided to choose Dublin: One City, One
Book as the project we wanted to work on .

Book chosen in June 2014 to be read in April 2015

2016 choice
-

Our course tutor

After gathering information of the three topics , interviewing Dubliners in the street,
taking pictures of buildings , attending workshops , visiting some places of interest and
the lectures , we analyzed and assessed all the ideas and at the end we presented the
outcome of our investigation based on the initiative Dublin: One City, One
Book .http://www.dublinonecityonebook.ie
One School, One Book ( powerpoint).

As we, applicants, were from different European countries , we could share some
teaching resources we use with our students in our classrooms. This exchange of
information was very useful to all of us. Some of the resources we are currently using
at school are:
- The website www.montsemorales.com ( Montse was attending the course as
well) ,
- The app kahoot! (to revise vocabulary interactively in the classroom)
- Rorys Storycubes ( to create countless tales, great to improve writing skills)
- Short Irish Films with activities to develop literacy skills www.thisisirishfilm.ie (
see Prezi Teaching Resources on films)

And this was the good-bye day !!! Wonderful having met all of them!!!