kiraskole

Activity 1

Angela’s Ashes!

I have chosen to work with a passage from Angela’s Ashes. The passage I have chosen begins at page 246 line 8 What is dad to do… to page 249 line 6 …we can all go to America.

I intent to use this passage the middle of 8^th grade or the beginning of 9^th grade. The language and the topic are quite difficult but I believe the issues will motivate and engage a teenage class.

I plan to work with this book in my course on Irish culture and history. I will arrange for them to read about and work with Irish history, and when we read about the 1930ties to 1940ties I will let the pupils read this passage.

The vocabulary in this passage is not easy for Danish pupils in the 8^th or 9^th grade. It has not been prepared and simplified for pupils on this level. Words like eternal damnation, munitions, lower class, iron tongs, the dole, night girls, wireless and tormenting need to be explained.

Also some cultural references make it difficult for this group to read the passage. Expressions like tuppenny seats, fish and chip shops, scratching their arses on the queue at the Labour Exchange, look what the English did to us for eight hundred years, able to lord it over the families that don’t also need some extra explanation.

With this in mind I chose to work with some words and expressions. The pupils are already familiar with the Irish history in this period. I will start by giving them a brief orally introduction of who the author is and a short resume of his life story. After that I will pick out some of the difficult words: e.g. the dole, wireless, tormenting, lower class. I will ask them to use their dictionary and find the right explanation for the words.

E.g.

A: radio

B: To cause suffering

C: people with a low income

D: where you get your money from when you don’t have a job

After that I will ask the pupils to read the text at home. We will start the following lesson by reading part of the text loud in class or maybe the whole text depending on how it goes. After that we will talk about the above-mentioned cultural references.

After the reading I have prepared some questions for them to answer in groups.  I would like to concentrate on the Irish situation in the 2^nd world war. Who did they support and why?  I will ask them to reread the song on page 247. The song some Irish families sang during the 2^nd  World War. Why weren’t they loyal to the allied and why did they chose to work for them (the English) anyway? I think it is important that the pupils understand why the Irish reacted on the war the way they did. I want them to understand how poor some Irish were at the time. From this lessons I hope the pupils will also understand the relationship between the English and the Irish a little better.

I hope you will enjoy working with this as much as I have!