Lesson 2: My personal symbols (coat of arms part I)

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This is what I am

Learning objectives The students enhance their self-esteem by recognising and valuing their positive aspects.
Student tasks The students create their personal symbols which will be part of a group coat of arms. They ask themselves questions about their own perception of themselves and use the strengths identif ed in lesson 1. The students form groups as a pre-requisite to lesson 3.
Resources Tables from the previous lesson, printed copies of the coat of arms (two per student), coloured pens, scissors.
Methods Individual work, forming of groups.

Information box

In European tradition, a coat of arms, more properly called an armorial achievement, armorial bearings or often just arms for short, is a design belonging to a particular person (or group of people) and used by them in a wide variety of ways. Historically, coats of arms were used by knights to be able to tell them apart from enemy soldiers. In Continental Europe commoners were able to adopt burgher arms. Unlike seals and emblems, coats of arms have a formal description that is expressed as a blazon. In the 21st century, coats of arms are still in use by a variety of institutions and individuals (for example several universities have guidelines on how their coats of arms may be used in order to protect their use).

The art of designing, displaying, describing, and recording arms is called heraldry. The use of coats of arms by countries, states, provinces, towns and villages is called civic heraldry.

Lesson description

1. The second lesson starts by forming the students into groups of four. It is recommended to form the groups using a group-forming game, such as handing out matching cards in sets of four or pictures in sets of four, etc. The students’ task is to f nd their other partners and form the group.
2. Next, the students should sit together in their groups. Each student receives a printed copy of the coat of arms. Another copy of the coat of arms is placed in the middle of the table. There are four sections on the coat of arms and the students should select one section each. They should write their names in pencil on the copy in the middle of the table. On their own copy, they should start cutting out their personal piece of the coat of arms.
3. The teacher should then ask the students to think about what personal symbols they could use to represent themselves. “This is what I am” should be the motto for this task. The extended message of this task could be “This is what I bring to the group”. For this, the teacher should ask the students to take out the tables they produced in lesson 1. They can get some ideas from the columns “I like doing and do” and “I don’t do but would like to”. They now have to f nd symbols that represent their strengths to draw into their section. The following questions could be of help:

  • How do you perceive yourself?
  • What do you need?
  • What are you capable of doing?
  • What do you regret when you think about your life?

 

Lesson 1: This is what I like
Lesson 3 - This is our coat of arms (coat of arms part II)
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