We are aware that students learn differently and that, as teachers,
we have to cope with multiple intelligences (in other words with Verbal-
Linguistic students, with Visual and Auditory students and with Kinesthetic
students). That’s why in order to motivate all students and to prepare them
to understand the mental attitude of the Victorians and the way they
considered education  I decided to vary the activities in class and to
use a variety of channels through which presenting the lesson contents,
that is to say an integrated combination of words, pictures and music from
the very Engagement phase. So the teacher, for example, as a first step will
use the traditional blackboard to write anchor-words, evidently belonging to
the semantic area of Education, which the students might need in the
Productive phase. He/she will also use the overhead projector to show
transparencies presenting the characters mentioned in the literary text in
the form of comics. It will be an helpful and funny means to arouse students’ curiosity and attention and a way to elicit their ideas and opinions about the given topic.

Moreover the teacher will appeal to the auditory channel by
proposing the listening of a song, Another brick in the wall by Pink Floyd,
that students will probably know. Of course this famous
song is not randomly chosen, since it deals with the education system in the
60s/70s: Pink Floyd openly criticize some aspects of their contemporary
education in it, such as ‘thought controI’ of people through pre-packed
knowledge.

Moreover the comics and the song will be very good expedients to
lower the affective filter of the class group thus creating a relaxed and
enjoyable atmosphere in the classroom.

In a folIowing step the students will have to direct their efforts in
drawing a mind-map of the text they are analysing and then in writing a
composition connecting all the points highlighted by the map itself. This
kind of activities will improve the students’ ability in elaborating a logic and
coherent text about a given topic: mind-mapping activity, in fact, helps
students to sum up the most important features of the text they have
studied, paying attention to its denotative and connotative message and to
the phonological, lexical and morpho-syntactic elements. Side by side with
the ability in writing a coherent text, they will have to show an appropriate
use of the linking words and connectors and a proper use of grammar items.

Moreover mind-mapping also encourages the students to establish
intertextual links between the literary text and the song they have heard.