harry potter: discussing friendship in school

www.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL • Porto Alegre • v. 9• nº 1 • 2019

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Harry Potter: discussing friendship in school

Amelia Lovatto

Elisa Hübner Alves

Introduction

This paper reports the experience we had as teachers in our first English

teaching internship. Our classes took place in Colégio de Aplicação da UFRGS, a public

school from Porto Alegre, in the 2017’s first semester. The participants were 9th

graders, aged between thirteen to fifteen year-old, there were thirteen students in our

group with different levels of proficiency1.

The project

The project was a product of our observations of a few of their classes. We

discovered their fondness for the Harry Potter saga2 and decided to use it in our

project. Besides our fondness for the series, there were members of the group who

mentioned the novels when we first visited the class. We also noticed small groups

that did not seem eager to engage with each other. The teacher told us the groups did

not blend, and a few students preferred to work alone; not because they resented the

others, but they seemed to find it easier than helping the ones who had more difficulty

in class activities. The intention was to approach students in their relationships, to

work with the concepts of empathy, generosity, emotional and trust that we find in

friendship and companionship.

We decided to work with the genre timeline, in English, because it would help

them to visualize friendship and perhaps they would understand better the moments

they had together with their friends. However, some students showed not being

comfortable talking about friendship with friends, so we opened to pets and family.

1 We understand proficiency as “the ability to act in a language, thus a speaker is more (or less)

proficient as far as the actions are more (or less) adequate to its historical expectations and (re)negotiated according to its context of production”. (DILLI; SCHOFFEN; SCHLATTER, 2012, p.182). 2 Series of novels from the English writer J.K. Rowling. The books depict a world of magic within reality, focused on the adventures of a young wizard named Harry Potter.


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The first step was a timeline about the main characters of Harry Potter, or at least,

people who were important to Harry. The writing of a timeline was intended to

recollect and review the steps of their relationship, how did they change throughout

the saga, how they were vital (or not) to each other in the process of growing up and

facing challenges and what were the events that established important marks as

friends. After this part, we had planned that the students could do their own timeline,

in the ways they did with the Harry Potter one.

Nevertheless, throughout the project, we realized that we did not have much

time to do everything we had planned. We had planned a timeline of their own

friends, with highlights for the moments they judged to be the most important ones.

So, according to how each class went, we made adjustments, to the point that we only

did the Harry Potter timeline.

The classes

First week: three classes

In our first class, we focused on getting to know each other. We made a

dynamic in which everyone, including the teachers, should write on four pieces of

paper a) What you do; b) What you like; c) What you don’t like and d) What you would

like to do but never did. After that, we switched the papers, so they had to guess to

whom the papers belonged. The dynamic worked very well because we got to know

them and they got to know us, moreover, they used a lot of English when they read

the answers out loud.

In the second class we decided to introduce them to the theme of our project:

friendship. In order to do that, we prepared an activity with the song I’ll be there for

you, by The Rembrandts, in which we would work with expressions related to

friendship.


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We were asking them questions to make them think about their own

relationships with their friends, these questions were consequence of the

comprehension activity:


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In the second part of the class, we presented them and built together with them a

scheme telling the plot and characters of Harry Potter. This was our final result:

This activity was important because, as we were not working with the movies

as a whole, only selected scenes, the ones who had not watched or read Harry Potter

could learn some context. Furthermore, it was important because the students

became aware of the topic of the project. However, there was a problem in this class

in which we presented them the theme, since we actually did not present them the

genre they we were going to work with, a timeline.

The third class, we were going to watch the first selected scenes, all from Harry

Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In order to prepare the students for the videos we did

a vocabulary activity. We distributed pictures and words related to the wizarding

world, some students had a word and some, a picture. They had to walk around the

class to find the word (or picture) that matched with the one they had. As soon as they

finished, we started to watch the scenes.

After each scene we watched we did a vocabulary activity, such as the following

one:


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The activities we planned were too focused on vocabulary, so as an adjustment

we would work more with comprehension in the following classes. We did not finish

watching the scenes in this class, so we had time to prepare different activities for the

following scenes we were going to watch in the succeeding week.

Second week: three classes

We continued to watch the scenes from the video and corrected the vocabulary

activities. Then we finished the class with a personality test to divide them into groups.

For each house in the Harry Potter saga, there are personality traits that define the

student's behavior and goals in the story. They were very excited about which house


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they would be sorted in, and kept discussing with their classmates what would they

answer in each question.

The purpose of this activity was to engage the students with the Harry Potter’s

world, to make them feel included in it. However, we did not want to extend ourselves

in the saga because we were already planning another activity on the houses, and the

purpose was to work with the character’s friendship, so we applied the tests in

Portuguese.

We collected their tests and corrected them at home. In the next class, we

started with the activity of sorting the houses. The students were thrilled with this

activity. We looked at their tests and shared the results with them.


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Then we started to ask them if they remembered the scenes we had watched

with them. What they thought about the characters, their relationship and what they

thought of each of their scenes so we would work with comprehension in an oral

discussion.

After this, we focused on group work, which went very well in this first activity.

In their groups, most of them memorized the lines of short scenes and acted them in

front of the class. The most important part of the activity was that they could practice

their oral skills in English out loud, which was one of their difficulties.


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In the next class we did a game with them which was one of the most

successful dynamics of all. In their groups they chose one student to sort one of the

papers we prepared with the vocabulary words from the videos. After that, they had to

do mimics or to draw in the board (depending on the difficulty) the meaning of the

word and their group had to guess.

They were really involved in this activity and practiced oral skills and reading

since they had to remember the meaning in English. Also, group work was really

important in this activity, and they had to work together in order to engage with the

game and win the rounds.


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One of our most satisfying things that happened in this class was the

participation of students who were not used to participate. Their engagement was

great in this activity, so we decided to make the whole class of pictionary, instead of

beginning the writing activities and the construction of the timeline in English.

Third week:

This week was dedicated to finish the timeline. Some groups needed two

classes to finish their writing - a description of the scenes they had chosen as marks -

and to rewrite it on the poster. As some students did it easily, we prepared an extra

activity for them, which consisted in reading “The Tale of the Three Brothers” and

answering questions. However, this activity showed some problems that are worth

being discussed.


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It was too complex for the students and many of them did not manage to

answer it. We did not intend to make out of it a big part of the class, but it ended up

taking any more classes than planned, so we had to rearrange the schedule in order to

finish the project. Moreover, this was a very traditional activity, one that does not have

a pre-reading activity, and its questions are not doable for 9th graders with their

proficiency.

Fourth week:

We began the presentation of their first timeline. One of the participants of the

group was chosen to present the timeline in English, and the group could help the

student to remember what happened in the scenes of Harry Potter and his friends.

They questioned some of the actions of the characters, which we thought to be

very critical of them. They spoke in Portuguese, yet we helped them translate their

ideas and write them on the board, such as personal features of the characters and

how they changed (or not) in the story. We continued by watching the second video of

scenes with the other Harry Potter movies, but we only had one hour for this class due

to the school’s activities.

Fifth week:

The students established the highlights of Harry, Rony and Hermione’s

friendship and started the description of the scenes. In this class only a few students of

each group worked hard on the building of the timeline, resulting in a decision on our

“prize” for the contest of the houses.

The three groups of houses were supposed to accumulate points in the

activities and games during our project. Our criteria was to evaluate them in their work

group and participation, but after the second timeline, we decided to divide the prizes

and to give them to the four students who participated and engaged the most in the

activities, who respected our schedule and work for their groups.


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We talked to them about our change in the criteria for the distribution of

prizes: all of the students received a small bag of chocolates and cookies, and the four

students who earned the prizes received also a mug from Patas Dadas and a slice of

brownie.

They agreed on our decision and took a picture with us. They all said goodbye

to us, and we talked about how great was the experience to teach them, how much we

learned with them and how much we hoped them to have learned with us.


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Final Considerations

This was our first experience in English teaching in a school, and the most

interesting thing about sharing our project is to see how it can change and how we

have to make adjustments more frequently than we actually expected. We learned a

lot related to time management, designing tasks according to proficiency and length

for real students (not “ideal” theoretical students) and how to work with tasks such as

reading and pre-reading.

What we intended to accomplish as a final product was the timeline of their

own friendships, in which they would relate to what they discussed in the Harry

Potter’s relationships between characters. The Harry Potter saga was supposed to help

them to build the concept of friendship and discuss what they agreed or disagreed

about what they defined as a good friendship.

We think the most important part of this experience was not making the

perfect project, but to learn how to deal with the barriers that might appear during the

process. In life we are constantly making adjustments to achieve a result; the same

happens in classroom. With this report, we hope we can share our learning and that

other people may be able to learn with it too.

Bibliography

DILLI, C.; SCHOFFEN, J. R.; SCHLATTER, M. (2012) Parâmetros de avaliação de produção

escrita orientados pela noção de gênero do discurso. In: Schoffen, J. R.; Kunrath, S.;

Andrighetti, G. H.; Santos, L. G. (orgs.) Português como língua adicional: reflexões para

a prática docente. Porto Alegre: Bem Brasil. p. 171-199.

FREITAS, Ana Luiza; SARMENTO, Simone (org.). O ensino de inglês como língua

estrangeira: estudos e reflexões II. Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, 2009. 322 p.

LEBRECHT, Norman. How Harry Saved Reading. The Wall Street Journal, Nova York, 9

de julho de 2011. Disponível em:

<http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304584004576419742308635716>.

Acessado em: 30.03.2017.


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Amelia Lovatto

Licenciada em Letras Português-Inglês pela Universidade

Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Atua como pesquisadora em

ensino de texto na área de Linguística Aplicada, e ministrou

disciplinas eletivas de leitura e produção textual para o

terceiro ano do Ensino Médio no Colégio de Aplicação da

UFRGS durante 2017. É também professora de inglês no

curso Pré-Vestibular CEUE.

Elisa Hübner Alves

Licenciada em Letras – Português e Inglês pela Universidade

Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Atuou como pesquisadora na

área de Literatura Brasileira.

harry potter: discussing friendship in school

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