The lesson starts with a warmer, a pair work activity in which students have to answer the same question that was asked of the participants in the video. The second part of the warmer, when they have to collect what they have in common as a group, aims to highlight their diversity but also to shed light on all the things that unite them. The warmer sets the tone for the video and puts students in a good mood. The next activity focuses on the clarification of some key terms in connection with the video and aims to pre-teach some vocabulary and thus activate students’ schemata. First, the students work together on identifying the terms, and while checking the activity, the teacher plays an important role as they can draw attention to the commonly misinterpreted and misused words to raise awareness of the issues in connection with feminism or gender. While watching the video, the students are also asked to select words they can hear from a list to develop their listening for specific information. After watching the video, they are invited to reflect on it and say how it makes them feel to enable them to talk about their feelings and react quickly to new information. The following activity serves as a vocabulary building one, as the list includes vocabulary items in connection with personality that might be either new or already known to the students. The follow-up questions serve to reinforce the newly acquired vocabulary by using them in context. The discussion questions in exercise 6 are in connection with the topic raised in the video but aim at personalising it. By tapping into their personal experiences, students might teach each other some strategies for communicating across the divides of their everyday lives and see the relevance of the topic more. In the opinion-line activity, they have a chance to put what they have learnt from each other into practice. The statements for the opinion line are selected from the video, they have to complete them before lining up. With this activity, they are made to take a stand on important issues and in the follow-up, they are asked to elaborate on their views in pairs. The visual and physical representation of their views might make them realise the diversity of opinions. As they have to form pairs with the person standing the furthest from them, they might have to disagree with the other person, but they should be encouraged to find the common ground by their teacher and by what they have seen. The final activity, in which students have to brainstorm ideas and also do some research on bridging the divide and fighting political polarization serves a dual purpose: firstly, by doing the activity, students can develop their numerous skills, e.g., their critical thinking, creativity, cooperation, researching and analytical skills and secondly, they might acquire useful and practical information on the topic that they will be able to use outside the class. The worksheet can be found in Appendix I.

 

Generally, the students enjoyed the video, they found it amusing and touching at the same time and they really liked the message that beer can bring people together, even to discuss their differences. In both Groups A and H there were dissenting voices though, who criticised the video for being staged. The follow-up discussion activity, contrary to my previous expectations, turned out to be extremely engaging to the students in Group A. Most of them could recall incidents they had with people they were not on the same page with, and they eagerly shared stories of arguments about politics, religion, and common misconceptions. Unfortunately, there was no time left in class for this discussion with Groups G and H, so they had to discuss the questions by calling each other in their asynchronous lesson and write summaries of their discussion. Luckily, these entries did reflect that they engaged in the discussions and shared interesting stories with each other. In Group A, the opinion line activity was a success as well: the students observably enjoyed standing up and finding their place on the imaginary line and then discussing their opinion with the other students. The question of feminism clearly divided the group: except for one male student, all the others said that they were not feminists at all. According to the task design, then, they had to have a conversation with someone standing farther away from them in the line, and as they had the video as a model, they had cultured discussions about what feminism entails, and then, there were students who eventually changed their position in the line. Groups G and H did the activity using menti.com, and then they had to discuss and record their discussion with their partners. In this way, the activity was less impactful, nevertheless, the students still managed to convey their message in a respectful way.

In Group A, there was no time left for the project in class, so they did it as homework, and they discussed their findings in the next class. In Groups G and H, they did some research in their asynchronous lessons, and posted their findings to our online classroom, the Class Notebook function of Teams. The tips they presented for bridging the political divide were well thought out and they presented them in different forms – either in writing or on a poster or in a video. Some examples of the students’ work can be seen in Appendix P3.

 

They also commented on the awareness-raising nature of the activities: Respondent 4 learned that “nothing is black or white, and we can never be so sure about our opinions that they are the only possible solutions. We always need to be aware that others might be right.” Respondent 7 saw it similarly, saying that “these activities helped [them] to get to know each other a bit better and find some common ground”, just as Respondent 10, who wrote that it was an interesting experience to “open their minds to each other” and “become more accepting”. Another student commented that the activities (mostly the one with definitions of common buzzwords from the 21st century) helped her realize that she does not, in fact, know that much about topics she thought she did. Finally, Respondent 4 expressed some constructive criticism about the lesson: he felt that more time would have been needed to “delve into the discussions” so for him,