Essay about monument to heroes and the heroic deed (to the 80th anniversary of the Victory)

The article describes the methodology of working on an essay about monuments to heroes and the heroic deed in a Russian language lesson at secondary school. The article aims to substantiate the appropriateness of teaching this essay type for schoolchildren’s speech development at secondary school as well as for promoting the development of patriotism, civic identity, and commitment to national ideals in them. Taking into account the value of monumental art works in the national symbolic space, basic approaches for using the images of memorials and monuments as a source of secondary school students’ speech activity and the subject matter of their essays were developed. The analysis of scientific and methodological experience made it possible, on the one hand, to substantiate the educational role of this essay type and on the other hand, to show the main approaches to the methodology of working on it. The study identified certain types of essays about monuments such as monument descriptions, stories about visiting a memorial, essays about the national and cultural symbolic significance of a particular monument, and others. In addition, a model for preparing for an essay about a monument to heroes and the heroic deed (years 10–11) was developed. Moreover, the research describes the main methods and practices of work including conversation, answers to the teacher’s questions, correspondence excursions, design/analysis of a semantic scheme of speech based on the topoi definition, properties, reason, and so on. The article examines the use of the model on the basis of an essay about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The stages of preparation for essay writing were identified; relevant didactic materials (including literary texts about the memorial), and methodological recommendations for the lesson were provided. The testing conducted on the example of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier description showed that the proposed approaches enrich schoolchildren’s axiosphere, help them select facts and linguistic units for their essays, as well as structure the text.