5.3.1.3.1. Results from the Reflective Journals. This worksheet was also piloted in the university context; therefore, the description of the aims and main steps of the lesson can be found in Section 4.3.1.3. In the secondary school context, three teachers chose this sequence to try out with their students (Alma, Johanna, and Ubul) and they did the sequence with 39 students, overall. All three teachers wrote entries in their reflective journals about the lessons when they used the worksheet, and as the result of the content analysis, some recurring themes were found. All three of them wrote about their reason behind choosing this worksheet to use with their groups, however, their reasons differed: Alma asked her students to choose the tasks they wanted to do from the 10 worksheets offered, Ubul found this worksheet interesting, and finally, Johanna gave the choice to her trainee, who was doing her short teaching practice under her wings, and he chose based on the fact that he liked the song and felt that the topic was important. All three participants noted that the song really engaged the students, even if in two groups (Alma’s and Johanna’s), some students already knew the song. They found the video clip gripping; and even though Alma warmed the students that the clip may be too harsh, they did not seem to mind it. In connection with the multiple-choice questions checking students’ understanding of the lyrics, Johanna’s group remarked that subtitles would have helped, but Ubul’s group did it with ease. Ubul commented that the vocabulary exercise was easy for his students, and Johanna’s trainee perceived it similarly but added that a bit more guidance would have been needed for the group. Ubul and Johanna’s trainee executed the discussion exercise quite differently, in the latter case, they had a mingling activity, in which they were asked to discuss two questions from the list, but in Ubul’s group, they discussed all the questions in pairs. He observed that “this topic needs a certain level of maturity” (J/GF-U-1), and he was positively surprised how much of that his students exhibited while discussing the questions. He was happy to hear that his students came up with advantageous ideas to the questions How could people fight against poverty? and What could you, as an individual, do to help? Both Johanna’s trainee and Ubul commented on the Kahoot! quiz, which aimed at testing the students’ knowledge about poverty-related issues. Johanna’s trainee felt that he should not have left this activity to the end of the class, as it would have energised the students properly and got them into the mood for the topic, even though he admitted that it was a truly enjoyable activity for the students anyway. According to Ubul, the quiz “helped to deepen the issue, but the facts were too difficult” (J/GF-U-1), so the students did not have the feeling of success after guessing the answers. Nevertheless, they were truly surprised by some numbers, and hopefully, the activity made them think. Reflecting on the whole sequence, both Alma and Ubul stated that they were happy to see their students’ engagement, and Ubul added that it is necessary to deal with such a topic in preparation for the B2 or C1 language exams and “introducing it with a song makes it acceptable and tolerable” (J/GF-U-1).

 

5.3.1.3.2. Results of the Student Feedback. Even though all in all, 39 students should have completed the worksheet in their lessons, only 29 students filled in the questionnaire about the activity sequence. When asked how much they enjoyed the activity sequence, most of the students answered with a 4 (n = 13) on a scale of five, which amounted to the mean of 4.09 (SD = .92). In connection with the language skills the sequence helped them develop, they awarded a mean of 3.75 (SD = 1.09) on a scale of 5, with most students either marking 4 (n = 8) or 5 (n = 9). To the last Likert-scale question about the extent to which the sequence developed their 21st-century skills, they gave a slightly higher average (M = 3.86; SD = .92). The top three skills the students perceived the lessons developed were communication (20), problem-solving (18) and perspective-taking (15).

Respondent 3 elaborated that information did not only come from the activities but from the other students by saying that “even though [they] follow the news about these topics, [they] feel like talking about the issues that came up helped [them] understand other people’s opinions”. Other students remarked that the activities did not provide them with any new information, commenting that they already knew about the situation (#3) or they “know a lot about the world anyway” (#6). On another note, two students remarked that even though the activities were interesting and engaging, the topic was too depressing for them. Finally, other students appreciated that they could see life through other people’s eyes (in this case, they could identify with the singer of the song).