Saturday's lessons for class A-level 1 were devoted to Sławomir Mrożek's ‘Tango’. The students worked in groups, completing a series of tasks on the play.
The house as the key to the play
The lesson began with a word puzzle on the description of the house in ‘Tango’. The exercise allowed the students to get into the atmosphere of the work and recall the key elements of its setting. The setting has particular significance in the play: the Stomil family's cluttered flat is an image of a world in which all norms have been abolished, and young Artur tries to restore order to it.
Activity carousel
The class was then divided into three groups, which worked in an activity carousel format – each group completed all the tasks in turn:
- Task 1 – Wordwall: a series of interactive games in which the students matched definitions to terms, identified the characters of the play and consolidated their knowledge of them.
- Task 2 – sorting the ‘normal’ and the ‘strange’ world: the groups assigned events, props and characters to one of these worlds and justified their choices in writing in their exercise books.
- Task 3 – chronology and the story mountain, the most difficult task: the students put the events of ‘Tango’ in chronological order and then completed a story mountain, choosing the five most important events and explaining why exactly these are key.
A story mountain (in Polish, ‘góra opowieści’) is a diagram well known from British schools: it presents the plot as a climb from the opening, through rising tension and the climax, to the resolution. It helps to put events in order and to see which of them really drive the action forward.
The tasks were difficult and required a great deal of concentration, but the students handled them superbly. The class showed excellent teamwork and is finding its way ever more confidently around the world of Mrożek's play. More photos from the lesson can be seen in the gallery.
