Day 4

It was a really intense day and the focus was on literature. In the first workshop we got acquainted with different literary pieces that could be used with teenagers. We studied the prescribed text list for English Junior Cycle English, which is for students aged 12-15. I have learnt that since 2014 the Irish schools have been implementing a new literacy programme with the aim of improving students’ basic skills. They have been focusing on active reading, exposing students to different types of texts. The prescribed text list changes every few years and the different types of texts are always studied under a theme.

We dealt with one author whose works are very popular among young people: Roddy Doyle. We looked at one of his books: Wilderness and we collected and discussed different kinds of pre-reading and active tasks that we could use with our students when working on a book. I found it really useful.

During the second workshop we were prepared for our cultural visit in the afternoon, namely the exhibition about Seamus Heaney. We looked at his poetry with a special emphasis on three of his poems: ‘The Rainstick’, ‘Digging’ and ‘Blackberry picking’. We read the poem together, analysed the meaning of them and worked with their vocabulary.

In the afternoon we visited the exhibition titled ‘Listen now again!’, a sentence taken from his poem ‘The Rainstick’. The exhibition was very well-organised and provided me with useful information about this Nobel-prize-winner Irish poet, highlighting the different stages of his poetry, his influences, his engagement in politics and his later poetry. The exhibition consisted of personal items donated by Seamus Heaney’s family to the National Library of Ireland.