"Autumn Emotion" – the first interdisciplinary lesson organized following the Erasmus job-shadowing mission in Poland

On 25 November 2025, the interdisciplinary activity Autumn Emotion took place at Liceul Teoretic "Radu Vlădescu", in Pătârlagele town, Buzău county. Coordinated by two teachers, Mrs. Claudia Emilia Frînculeasă and Mrs. Adelaida Loredana Iorga, members of the Modern Languages and Language and Communication Methodological Committees, the activity integrated inclusive methods and innovative educational resources promoted through the Erasmus Project 2025-1-RO01-KA121-SCH-000321135, funded by the European Union under the 2023–2027 Accreditation.

The teaching experience capitalized on the competences acquired during the job-shadowing mobility carried out between 27–31 October 2025 at XIII Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Bohaterów Westerplatte in Kraków, Poland, where effective models of integrating technology, collaboration and critical thinking into teaching were observed.

As a competence-based interdisciplinary approach, the lesson relied on the National Curriculum for teaching EFL and targeted:

• identifying the main ideas in a literary text;
• expressing opinions and comparing them to personal perspectives;
• translating Nichita Stănescu’s poem Emoție de toamnă from Romanian into English;
• connecting the literary message to one's own experiences and authentic emotions.

The students, whose linguistic levels are B1, B1+ and B2, worked individually and collaboratively to transform the reading of the poem into a personal, creative and deeply reflective experience.

1. Lead-In: Emotion as a starting point

The lesson began with an activity designed to activate prior knowledge, in which students completed prompts such as “When autumn comes, I often feel…” or “An ingredient of a strong love is…”. This technique created a natural bridge between personal experience and the emotional universe of the poem.

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2. Collaborative translation of the poem

In teams of 4–6 students, the participants used online dictionaries to translate Nichita Stănescu’s poem Emoție de toamnă into English.

This activity stimulated negotiation of meaning, exploration of metaphors, and identification of key symbols. After completing the translations, a whole-class discussion followed to refine the text and observe interpretative differences.

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3. Identifying main ideas

Using a Wordwall resource, students matched each stanza with its central ideas: vulnerability, fear of separation, alienation, silence, and poetic transformation. This activity contributed to the development of analytical and literary comprehension skills.

https://wordwall.net/resource/96464399

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4. Personalisation: Literature as a mirror of emotion

Through the digital resource How do readers become co-authors in Poetry?

https://learningapps.org/view41642454

published on LearningApps, the students reflected on the poet-reader partnership - an interactive relationship in which the poet creates an artistic message, while the reader reconstructs, interprets, and gives meaning to it based on personal experiences, emotions, and knowledge.

Thus, the students understood that poetry is a process of literary communication in which meaning is not fixed but emerges from the encounter between text and reader.

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5. Differentiated assessment

Two digital resources were used-one for B1 level:

https://learningapps.org/view41653150

and one for B2 level:

https://learningapps.org/view41627867 

to check, in real time, the students’ understanding of the poem, its metaphors, and its vocabulary. The activities allowed the two teachers to provide quick and level-appropriate feedback.

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6. Feedback & Homework

The lesson ended with self-evaluation and teacher feedback:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b4OuwxWwIqcj3my_HdoSVdeU-HvbVD0E/edit

The students then received two tasks:

• listening again to the song Emoție de toamnă performed by Nicu Alifantis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pizEnsP6AI

• writing a 75–100-word reflection starting from the quotation: “The purpose of art is to stop time.”

The Autumn Emotion lesson successfully combined Romanian literature, personal expression in English, and the digital competences acquired through Erasmus+.

The students of the 11U Humanities class were encouraged to and managed:

• to express their emotions authentically;
• to understand poetic symbols in an accessible way;
• to collaborate in translation and interpretation tasks;
• to use technology for meaningful learning;
• to reflect on their own relationship with art and love.

Such a lesson demonstrates that interdisciplinary education supported by European programmes transforms the classroom into a dynamic space for critical thinking, creativity, and personal development.

Based on the feedback received from the methodological committee members, it can be stated that this interdisciplinary lesson directly contributed to multiplying the experiences and good practices gained by the teachers from Liceul Teoretic "Radu Vlădescu", Pătârlagele, during the Erasmus job-shadowing mobility. It transformed the observation missions into a concrete, practical, and replicable pedagogical approach within the entire school community.

The activities focused on collaboration, personal reflection, the use of interactive digital resources, and differentiated assessment reflect the modern methods observed in the partner school in Kraków. Their integration into this lesson demonstrates the teachers’ ability to adapt and apply European practices in a local context. Through this type of activity, the mobility experience becomes accessible to colleagues, students, and the entire educational community, generating a multiplying effect that promotes innovation, inclusion, and quality in teaching.

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the author, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.