Azzi In Between

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Azzi is in a school where there are sympathetic adults who help her learn the new language. She becomes part of the class when she can contribute beans to grow in the school garden. These beans have travelled with the family and link the past with the present. There is a happy ending for this family when Azzi’s grandmother arrives safely to join them, and the beans symbolise a hopeful future. It could be an opportunity to consider what you would miss most if you had to leave everything behind? And importantly, how could you help someone like Azzi cope if they arrived in your class? Dr Grit Bergner is a senior lecturer in the Department of Language Learning and Language Teaching at the University of Erfurt. She worked as a primary school teacher for 25 years and is co-author of the course book Discovery (2015) .

After many adventures the family arrive in new country (perhaps New Zealand or Australia) where they face hardships of a different kind. Will they be allowed to stay? Will father and mother be allowed to work? Azzi yearns for her Grandma but meanwhile she must settle into her new school and learn to speak English. How relieved the reader feels that she is welcomed and helped! And eventually Grandma also manages to escape and join her family. Children have to leave their country because… ‘it’s dangerous’, ‘they are scared’, ‘their houses are destroyed because of war’.

This account of a Syrian family trying to survive civil war is powerful and moving. The complications of who is fighting and why are dealt with in the context of a young teenage boy’s experience and the impact on his family’s life. The story had become personally relevant to the learners, and depending on their developmental stage and their knowledge of the world, different aspects were important. All of them appeared to have gained insights into the topic and seemed to have developed empathy with refugees. From the point of view of the learners, the target language was a medium of storytelling rather than an object of learning. Sarah Garland generously donated her work for Azzi in Between to Seven Stories in 2012. Her Archive includes storyboards, draft texts, dummy artwork as well as finished and alternative artwork. The draft texts offer interesting revelations – such as Azzi originally being named Amira, and clearly show the editing process through a series of changes and extensive notes. But for us, October’s ‘file in focus’ is SG/04/03, or in non-catalogue speak, reference photos and sketches. Beans are the main ingredient in Azzi’s favourite meal, ‘spicy beans’, which is prepared by her mother in the story. While her father has given up the dream of growing beans in the new country, Azzi suggests sowing them in the school garden. Coming home in high spirits to share her idea, Azzi discovers that mother is cooking supper from the bean seeds she had hoped to plant. Listening to that part of the story, the learners seemed to share Azzi’s feelings of excitement and disappointment, and finally rejoiced together with her when she spotted the eight beans that had fallen from father’s bag. The learners discovered that the story of the beans is very similar to that of Azzi’s family: uprooted from their home, brought to a foreign country, and finally taking root in a new soil. In addition, the children were interested in a very practical question: what was actually meant by ‘spicy beans’? Having translated the phrase literally, it was supposed that the meal might be a kind of chilli con carne, a spicy dish which most of them knew and which usually contains kidney beans. So the children planted kidney beans to see if they would grow in their classroom. They planted kidney beans, bought at the local supermarket, in soil in plastic cups and watered them – and the plants grew and grew (Figure 6). It really helps show readers that people forced from their homes are not just refugees but children just like them.

Having accompanied Azzi on her dangerous journey to a new country, the learners understood that Azzi was relieved and sad at the same time when she finally arrived at her new home. They thought about what they would miss if they were far away from their home. A paper strip which said, ‘Away from home, I would miss…’ was the starting point for the making of collages.All of our upcoming public events and our St Pancras building tours are going ahead. Read our latest blog post about planned events for more information.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-02-14 05:14:00 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40861516 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier All of the children, eleven girls and nine boys, were native speakers of German. They had been learning English for about one-and-a-half years, in two 45-minute lessons per week, a total of one hundred lessons. The children’s listening skills were at or below A1 level. They were able to understand classroom phrases in English as well as very simple everyday expressions in clear and slow speech. However, they were used to reading English picturebooks together with their English teacher. The topics of family, jobs, houses and homes as well as feelings had been covered before the book was presented. Yet the number of productively used English words was still limited to not more than 200-300. In their communication, the children mainly used fixed phrases and language patterns which were individualised by adding single words of personal relevance.Our Family Station in St Pancras is open from 10.00-12.00 every Friday and we're continuing to welcome schools, as well as families and adult learners to our courses and access events. All our in-person and livestreamed events are going ahead. Other services As the title suggests, Azzi finds herself living in a new country where there is no physical threat of harm, but isolated from her past life and unable to fit in with the new place, her family find a home. The absence of colour in the illustrations, capture the trauma of what has happened to force her and her Mum and Dad to leave their home and more importantly her grandmother behind. The issues of language barriers, finding accommodation and being allowed to work are well-portrayed. It’s possible that this situation is familiar to children in classes all over the U.K. How well do other children understand what has happened to children like this, and how desperately they need friendship and understanding from them? Introduced in a predominantly mono-ethnic school, it was hoped that Azzi In Between might also help to develop the learners’ intercultural competence, learning about the topic of refugees as an issue of global relevance. It was intended to develop their empathy and understanding, recognising that ‘refugee children are ordinary children in extraordinary circumstances’ (Hope, 2008, p. 298).