This project consisted on the creation of a twenty minutes workshop focus on one topic and with a special context, the story of Aladdin.

Firstly I am going to talk about the preparation of these kind projects. I have to said that although prepare activities for twenty minutes look very easy, we have to take into account that this activities should be significant. It means, for me it has not sense prepare activities just for spend time. Significant learning should be included. Furthermore we wanted to include the use of ICTs and it gave an extra difficulty to the preparation. The reason was that we had to take into account the level of the students and the possibility of have technical problems, such as internet problems. In addition, this preparation also included the creation of a catchy environment. For me it was the hardest and the funniest part of the project. The hardest because we created a “jaima” in the class and we had to bring a lot of very heavy material such as carpets. The funnies because, although we spent a lot of time, we enjoyed a lot the process.

Moreover the day of the workshop was very different of what I though. Improvisation is the best word to define my feelings of this day. For example, during the first performance we ran a lot to achieve the time, but suddenly we discovered that we had ten minutes more. In this time we started to include new element such a choreography that we have prepared for be done just by us. Also in other performances the time was shorter, and we had to delete some activities from our plans.

But finally the results were unbeatable. I am really proud of what we did, and also I think that I learned a lot from this experience. Now I fell that I am more prepare for the management of student, for the inclusion of literature elements in the workshops, for the control of the time of the activities and my self-confident with students has grown since this moment.

In conclusion I fell satisfied. And as this is probably my last post I will like to say good bye and mention that it was a pleasure shared my posts with all of you.

According with Rebecca Walters (2014), the “Readers Theatre or Reader’s Theater is a style of theater in which the actors do or do not memorize their lines. Actors use only vocal expression to help the audience understand the story rather than visual storytelling such as sets, costumes, intricate blocking, and movement. This style of performance of literature was initially lauded because it emphasized hearing a written text as a new way to understand literature.”

It means that Readers Theater is a style of theater in which we don’t need to much resources or preparation time to performance some texts. Furthermore it also means that it is a great possibility to work in our classes. In fact, there are some web pages with some interesting resources to work on contents through the Readers Theater.

Here you have my favorites. They are really well organized and I recommend you visit at least one of this pages.

http://www.thebestclass.org/rtscripts.html

http://www.aaronshep.com/rt/RTE.html

http://www.readinga-z.com/fluency/readers-theater-scripts/

http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm

In addition, I will like to share with you my own experience when I was playing Reader Theater. We played different levels of this theater style, and I realize that this task could be great to work on a progressive way.  I think that, because at the same time that you are working on contents, you fell really involved in a literature environment and this could be really useful for children. Also I realize that it is a great opportunity to work on pronunciation and intonation. In fact, I have corrected my own mistakes as blood or walruses pronunciation.  Furthermore we were deciding in groups the emphasis, the pauses and the stress points. In this way we can encourage communication in our lessons.

In conclusion this is a new tool for us and it is full of advantages. I am sure that there are some disadvantages too, although I didn’t realize them. Anyway we can try it and check it.

I would like to start with “Aladdin”, as a starting point for the workshops that we have to do for next week. As you probably know, the original story of Aladdin was not based on an Arabian context. In fact, the main character of this story was a Chinese boy. I found other interesting differences, such as, the name of the princess (Badrulbudur), the tricks of the antagonist (that pretend to be a family member of Aladdin) or the role of the princess (who is tricked by the evil magician). But basically both stories follow the same structure: Someone from a situation of poverty became rich with tricks. Then a villain ruins the situation. But finally the protagonist recovers the comfortable life style, but in this case as he grows older. Of course there are many more differences. Here I provide you with some interesting resources to discover these differences:

http://interestingliterature.com/2013/01/30/surprising-facts-about-aladdin/ (short introduction)

http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/Brittany.htm (take your time to read)

Another popular story that I would like to mention is “Cinderella”. Last week in our English literature class we were dealing with three different versions of this story: The Grimm brothers’ story, the Perrault version and the Disney story. As I don’t want to be very repetitive I would like to present you other versions and their didactic possibilities. The Chinese version was written between 618 and 907 A.D. It includes some elements which belong to the oriental culture. For example, the taste for the little women (with the little feet), the polygamy, and the use of peculiar good luck symbols. In my opinion the most controversial topic to deal with in the school context is polygamy. In fact I think that it is a great way to introduce a cultural element that it is maybe difficult to understand for occidental students. Another version is the Native American one. It was created by the Abenaki tribe after the European colonization. This one is much more different than the Chinese version. This is because Native American culture is also very different. In this version we can find different spiritual characters and guardians of the elements. I think it could be great to deal with different customs to interpret the foreign cultures, and of course to work in a cross curricular way between cultures and literature.

In conclusion, you can find many different versions of very popular stories, and in my opinion they can work as the perfect link to unpopular topics (which are difficult to understand). With this research I have found a new world of possibilities to provide an extra sense to literature. I hope you find these ideas interesting, and of course I would be grateful to receive your ideas.

After deep reflection and research, I realized that there are many different possibilities to offer our students with a rich variety of literature, with not too much money.

The principal one and probably the easiest is asking the students to bring their own books to the class to share with their partners. This is fantastic because we can develop other values such as generosity. Furthermore, there are a lot of disadvantages too. The first one is that we have to adapt our didactics projects according to the kind of literature provided by the students.  Another big problem is that, if we want to create a library in our mother tongue the variety of books could be great, but in a foreign language it is more difficult. Most of our students don’t have English books at home. We can to solve this problem by giving them strategies to find the books: Asking older brothers, other members from higher years of the school, cousins… However, this could be a problem too, because there are maybe some parents that don´t agree with idea of sharing and asking others. Anyway, I think taking some risks could be useful, and we should try it.

Another alternative is creating a collective project with the school, to get second hand books. I think this is great, but also we have to assume some risks. We are using the name of the school to carry out a volunteering campaign, and we are going to be responsible for its success or failure. In spite of this risk, if we are finally successfully, this could be a great benefit for all of the school, not just for you own class.

Of course, there are millions of ways to get books with a reduced budget, such as getting them in markets and second hand shops, creating agreements with the editorials… but, as in this post I am just mentioning ways to get free books, I would like to finish by sharing with you a very useful resource. This is the website www.nolotiro.org. In this website we can advertise our necessity of books, or even offer them to others. The involvement of the people in this site is huge. You can receive a lot of donated books. In fact, for my project, I have already advertised my demands.

I hope you find my post useful and I would like to encourage you to visit this website. There are a lot of people waiting for your help: maybe you can be a generous donor!

corto winnie

During this week I was investigating with my peers about what makes an author the best.  The researching led me to evaluate the greatness of many authors and its origin. However after the thorough analysis I found out that the keystone is not the greatness itself but the target group and the aim.

With the information that I have acquired during this week I have made a classification of some authors taking into account the needs of the pupils.

To start with this classification as I said in my previous post I think the best author to work on contents is Eric Carl. His works are full of curricular questions (as in the book the very hungry caterpillar) and although for me is not the most important thing he created his very own book illustrations. It brought the right balance in the book composition and extra understanding support.

Moreover to promote good behaviors in my opinion the best author is Mark Brown with the Arthur´s books. These books are full of adventures but with the strangeness that the main character story is developed in a school scenario therefore the students will easily identify themselves. I believe that in this way we can promote modelling behavior attitudes.

Otherwise to deal with phobias or fears, my chosen author is Maurice Sendak. He is the writer of “Were the wild things are” and I think this book is advisable for everybody even adults. In my opinion we can extrapolate any fear to this story in order to overcome it.

Finally to encourage the students to write and read I have chosen two authors: Julia Donaldson and Alan Alexander Milne. I have chosen Julia Donaldson due to her book “The gruffalo”. This book is full of creativity and it explains how we can create real things using our imagination. That is the same that happen when we write; we are creating just from our imagination.

As well A.A. Milne came to my mind because of Winnie Pooh´s stories. This author created an imaginary world for his own son so it is specially tailor made for the children´s attention. With books like this we can foment the interest of our students to read. I have realized that reading is one of the best things that we can instill in our pupils.

I hope you find useful this post.

Feel free to come back with comments and share it: sharing is loving.

On one hand, we can divide the characters between the students. I think this is a very motivational method because the students can feel involve in the story, and in my opinion it achieves the whole attention of our students. However, I also think that this technique just works if the story is full of characters, because if not, just some pupils can participate. Another problem is that if we ask for volunteers, probably the shyest pupils will never participate.

On the other hand, we can choose other method to tell story. We can use the “Kong Fu” way. It consist in remarking with a Kong Fu sound and movement each punctuation mark.  In any case we can use another system sounds taking into account the preferences of our students. Nevertheless in my opinion this way is not the best, I think this is just good to focus on punctuation marks and intonation, never to work on the content of the story.

Finally, we have seen another strategy that is my favorite one. This one works including a contextualizing gesture for each significant word. I think it is brilliant to deal with CLIL, because you don’t need to be very concentrated in the text to understand the content, but in any case you can relate easily each word to the meanings. Also I think that is great because as the whole class can participate, the involvement is bigger, and with this kind of activities the shyest students have the opportunity to develop other skills.

Another interesting think that we have been investigating during the last week were the stories that involve a curricular content. I have found some interesting stories to deal with in CLIL classes. Not all of the contents that they treat are involved in the curriculum, but in any case the can be very useful.

Here I leave you the titles and the basic information, I hope you like it.

-The hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle (about butterflies´ cycle)

-Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Eric Carle and Bill Martin (about different animals and respect)

-Does a Kangaroo have a Mother, too? By Eric Carle (about animals´ habitat, feed and family)

-The rainbow snake, which is an Australian Aboriginal myth (about Australia, other cultures and myths and legends)

Thank you for readme

References:

Ioannou-Georgiou, S., & Ramírez Verdugo, M. D. (27 de 09 de 2014). Stories as a tool for teaching and learning in CLIL. Recuperado el 27 de 09 de 2014, de http://www.schools.ac.cy/klimakio/Themata/Anglika/conf_semin_workshops/Stories_ioannougeorgioudoloresramirez.pdf

My name is Carla María Calleja Rodríguez and I am studying  a bilingual degree for Primary Education  at Cardenal Cisneros University.

This blog is created for the subject “Exploring Children’s literature in English” and during this term I going to post some ideas and reflections about this area. I hope you will enjoy my commentaries and that you will find some interesting resources in my posts. Also I like to mention that I will be grateful of receive your commentaries, opinions and advices.

Thank you for read me and be welcome to this blog.