The first day of the final seminar began with online communication and exchange of impressions of project participants from three cities. Representatives from Grodno, Chernivtsi and Chisinau briefly described how their final projects were being worked on and what findings they had made in the process. Most of the impressions relate primarily to the discovery of the project participants‘ hometowns and their history.
In Chernivtsi, Natalia Herasym, who is an expert in didactics, presented the current methodology and different approaches to interactive educational projects at schools. In addition, she demonstrated effective methods, which can be applied during classes, and up-to-date technologies, namely photos, Google Maps, documents, which can be used in order to increase students‘ attentions and encourage them to interact. Natalia Herasym believes that the students’ respond is crucial. Hence, she suggested that the project participants should consider the audience age, which is one of the factors when choosing appropriate methods and types of classwork.
Also, on this day the final part of microprojects was implemented. Participants prepared the short presentations of the projects, listened to the pieces of advice given by their colleagues and discussed the difficulties they had faced along the project preparation.
The second day of the final seminar was dedicated to the preparation of micro-projects for presentation in schools of the city. History teacher Natalia Herasym told the participants how to prepare for the lessons and what approaches will help make the presentation of the project in the classroom more interactive.
The teacher also showed the participants several methods of presenting information to a certain age group of pupils. Because of the quarantine restrictions, the classes are currently online, so the participants discussed the specifics of conducting a lesson on online platforms. Each group developed a detailed plan of the future lesson.
The participants of the first group decided to hold a lesson in the form of a discussion about the work of Selma Meerbaum. Students and pupils will be able to listen to a part of the podcast and the poet’s poems, after which they will talk about the emotions evoked by the writer’s poetry and work with materials on the project website.
The second group will hold an introductory lesson in those classes where the study of the Holocaust has just begun. Participants will share their experience of searching for information about the history of the local ghetto and tell in which institutions in Chernivtsi you can find additional materials on this topic.
