About literature in a different perspective, beyond the curriculum

The location was the back hall of the “A” building of the DUE Bánki Donát Technikum. The event was organized by the institution’s humane work community. The event was opened by Eszter Mizerák, Deputy Director of Development and Coordination. Aki said in his introduction that the students were prepared with exciting, colorful and creative tasks. In addition to literature, history and geography were also in focus.

On the spot, we talked about the competition with the organizer Mária Bognárné Pongrácz, head of the school’s humanities work community.

– In Bánki, there is a more than twenty-year tradition of the Let’s Play Literature competition, this challenge has always enjoyed great popularity among the city’s schools. Thank God, nine teams applied, of which eight teams finally qualified. We welcome students from the seventh grade to the tenth grade of secondary school, as well as teams of four made up of enterprising young people. This year, three elementary school and five high school teams are competing.

We always try to choose some attention-grabbing work that inspires the students. There was Abigél before, or even Sherlock Holmes, for example. So we tend to choose not only explicitly from fiction, but also from the frontier areas of literature. The theme of this year’s competition is the youth work “The Society of Dead Poets”. As the deputy director also said, it is about young people for young people, and it really aroused a lot of interest among the children. In the Let’s Play Literature competition, there is always a preliminary task, such as creating a poster or a scene. We thought that this work was a good basis for the students to perform a really striking scene from it. At the competition, in addition to artistic knowledge, creativity is also measured with the tasks. In another puzzle, the contestants watched a movie scene, and there were questions about it. There was, of course, a test, in connection with which, for example, you had to get to know the characters of the play, using as little information as possible. In addition, there was also a map puzzle, since the locations related to certain scenes in the work, which also became a novel in 1995, had to be identified.

Decade-long traditions confirm the popularity of the competition, this is also due to the fact that young people really like to play, and in fact, on this afternoon, there is an opportunity to study literature not in a school-classroom setting, but in a playful way, enjoying and enjoying each other’s games , have fun. In this way, they get a completely different perspective and can experience something different than in the classroom, when the teacher tells and delivers the material. This is also of particular importance because there are actually very few social experiences for children these days. After all, they spend a lot of time in front of the computer or pressing their mobile phones, but during a competition like this they break away from it, they focus on each other and cheer for each other’s success, and last but not least, they also keep literature and the love of books alive – said Mária Bognárné Pongrácz.

The third place in the 2024 Let’s Play Literature competition was won by DSZC Lorántffy Zsuzsanna Technikum és Kollégium Lóri, the second best was the Költemények brigade from Dunaújváros Arany János Primary School, and the glorious victory was won by Magda Szabó Református Primary School Carpe Diem was won by his team.