Language Resident Name:

Maria Glukhova

Day and Date:

Wednesday, 10/14/2020

Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class):

Russian, Advanced

Number of people:

1 (or any)

Class theme/topics discussed:

Children’s literature

Goal of the class:

To work on translation skills and storytelling

How did you structure the class?

0. Greetings, announcements, general questions.

  1. Warm up questions:

On a scale from 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy reading as a child? Why?

What books did you like the most when you were a child?

What are the five (+) main differences between adult and children’s literature?

Do you think parents should read books aloud to their children? Why?

2. Activity: Find a short picture book that has no words, only images. Ask a student to look at it first. They should then come up with a text that describes what is happening as if it was written on these pages. Then you can do a slide show, and your student should pretend that they are narrators, and you are their child who is listening to a story. As a child, you can ask questions!

3. Activity: Find a short picture book with English text (I used “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats). If you only have one student, you can work on translating it into your target language together. If you have a group, students can work in pairs, and then you can compare different translations. Students should convince others that their translation is the best. 

4. Conclusion and a follow-up discussion.


Zoom, prepared picture books

What worked well in this class? What did not work?

In this class, I only had one student, and we had a great time working on translation together.

How could this class be improved/ modified?

I would leave it as it is. If you have more people, for the first activity, they can do one page each. Or you can also find a couple of books.