Lyfta storyworlds are designed to give your students as much opportunity to interact, discuss, and ask questions about the new place, people, and contexts that they visit. We strongly advise going through spaces slowly, immersing in the scene, and giving students plenty of time to interact and consider their thoughts.
Below are some tried and tested strategies and activities shared by you, our amazing educators! They encourage Lyfta sessions to be student-lead, facilitating rich and meaningful discussion that we hope you also thoroughly enjoy.
If you are interested in more detailed strategies, research, and scaffolds for oracy, please do watch the webinar, Lyfta for oracy.
Pre-viewing discussion strategies:
Utilise the globe as your first learning opportunity! Allow students to share prior knowledge as well as what they would like to know about a place. Are there any connections in the classroom to where you're going? Younger students may utilise the opportunity to revisit key geographical knowledge.
Exploring a storyworld
Just like reading the blurb and looking at the covers of a new book, exploring a storyworld is our chance to begin to build up our understanding of the story. It is a chance for your students to hone their prediction and inference skills.
In each new space, allow some time to listen to the soundscape whilst looking around. Encourage students to look for and think about the small details in each space. Ask:
What do you see/hear/notice?
What are you thinking? What feelings and emotions are evoked?
If you were standing in this spot, what questions would you ask these people?
What questions do you have about this place?
Many teachers display any key observations or questions to revisit after exploring all content within the storyworld.
Before watching the film
Having a couple of key questions for students to focus on can support with students' listening and reading skills. These will need to be differentiated, but could be taken from prior discussions.
It is important for you to watch the film before showing your class - to ensure there is nothing not appropriate for your students (please see traffic lights on lesson plans) and to support you in facilitating discussion throughout your session. Tip: you can change the speed on the video player in the settings if you are short for time!
Post-viewing discussions:
Where a Lyfta video or resource forms the common base for understanding amongst a group of students, we have a few recommendations for planning a post-viewing discussion, which include:
Thinking about what role you are going to play as a teacher
Are you going to play the impartial chairperson, devil’s advocate or declare your perspective?
Establishing ground rules
E.g. ensuring everyone is heard and respected, challenging the ideas not the people, respecting diversity of group and so forth.
Being prepared for when/if discussions trigger emotional responses
Reminder: Some of our films have the traffic light symbol - to understand why, click the content and it will explain in the lesson plan.
Setting objectives and timeframe for the discussion
For example, when students visit Malte in Berlin, they might want to focus on a specific question, such as ‘Why did Malte switch careers?’, which can be supported with this lesson plan.
Summarising, reflecting and discussing next steps
Providing sentence starters or model answers to help make room for every student to experience success within the lesson.