ITN24 PSLL - Workshop “A letter to the sea”

To begin with, each student was asked individually to put themselves in the shoes of a traveller talking to the sea. 

For about an hour, they wrote a letter in English to the sea, praising it or criticising it for the good and bad it does. All the letters were then collected.

Next, students were divided into 4 groups : for 30 minutes, each group had to read 9 letters distributed at random and agree on which one the group preferred.

Finally, the student who had written the letters that the 4 groups had selected read his/her writing in front of all the students. This oral reading in front of all the students and teachers was stressful for some of them.

Students reflected upon a very important social issue, from a different perspective and were encouraged to be in “someone’s shoes” empathising with them. So, this activity enabled them to think about the different symbols of the sea. Some focused on positive connotations (transport, holidays, leisure, birth, life, freedom etc.), others on negative connotations (life at sea and the difficulties people face, natural disasters, pollution, etc.). Discussions in groups about the letters led them to identify and compare the positive and negative points of each letter, and to realise that the sea has different symbols for different people.