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.

For the activity that we designed we were all dressed-up as characters from Aladdin’s film. And the plot of our activity begins by the time the Genie comes back from his trip around the world. Then in the activity the Genie appears with loads of presents that he took for Aladdin and Jasmine. During the activity children have to classify all the presents that the Genie bring for them depending on the country that the presents came from and by the time they finish it they have to define the route that the Genie follow during his holidays around the world.

It was a really fun and interesting project in which all of us learnt and had a great time, although it would be hard to say who enjoyed it more; the children or us.

Secondly I´m going to talk about the THEATRE activity that we did this week, which personally I think that it has loads of possibilities.

As I’ve just said, during this week we used the theatre as a tool for bringing English to students in a motivational way. Now I’m going to explain some of them.

For the first activity there need to be at least two pairs of people. The members of each pair have to be sitting in a single line and the one that is behind has to pretend that his arms are his partner´s arms. So once the two pairs are prepared, they will have to play a role such as pretending to be in a job interview, while the audience (the rest of the class) asks them questions.

In addition, in the next activity the students will form groups of four to six people. Then, two of them will be playing a role in which they are friends and for example, they are talking about the last holidays of one of them. While they are speaking the rest of the group members have to perform what the others are saying.

In conclusion, I think that these two activities can easily be done with primary students and also, they can be used as a cross-curricular activity, in order to review and learn almost every topic that they study at class in any other subject.

We were divided into six groups around the corridors of the principal building. Each group was decorated in a different scenario of Aladdin’s movie. Like the market, the Cave of Wonders, the dessert, the palace… if you were walking you could see some Aladdin, Jasmines, tigers, Jaffars or Genies running with flying carpets, magic lamps and all kind of things from the Arabian culture.

When the children came to my group scenario, called “The Secrets of Arabia”, they had to stay in front of the classroom door, touch the magic lamp and wait until the Genie comes and he give them 3 wishes. The Genie gave them money to buy things in Arabia, a way of transport, which is the flying carpet, and a turban to start the tour.

The first thing they could see was the market where Aladdin and his monkey Abu were waiting for them to teach them how to buy. Pupils could buy typical jewelry, fruit (apples, dates, and bananas), bread, tea or vessels. After the market, kids went to the palace were Jaffar was waiting for them. He taught them Arabian rules from the film trough activities and poetry. One rule was “Don’t steal or they will cut your hands” and another one was “The princess only has to marry a prince”. Then, they went to the palace garden where the princess Jasmine was dancing. She played some Arabic music and taught students how to do it following the instructions of a video. Children liked it and both, girls and boys, enjoyed this corner and danced together. The Genie was with the pupils during the whole tour helping them if they had any problem to speak English or if they didn’t understand something. Every time that the students finished a corner and they had to change to other one, the characters of those corners joined them to the next one, so at the end we were all together dancing and having fun. Finally, we gave them a bracelet as a little present from Arabia to make them remember this day and how great it was.

Personally, I liked very much the workshop and doing the performance with children instead of do it with our classmates but I also have to say that it was very exhausted but it was worth it.

As those weeks we had been working in our workshops related with Aladdin I was thinking about a possibility of doing something similar in a real school, I consider the workshops we are doing are a great motivational tool for children and can be really useful to make them read in most of the cases, so why don’t use this tool at schools as a way to motivate our pupils to take a book.

Maybe there would be a possibility of doing one workshop per two weeks, those would be about different books, of course all of them appropriate for children. During those two weeks the students would have the possibility to read the books and then to assist to the workshop which will be closely related with what they read and the teachers would have time to thing and concrete the way of the development of the whole project.

Apart of being a way to promote reading there are more positive aspects, as for example the idea of including HOTS in the workshops, the activities that we can introduce can be closely related with analyzing and creating, also we will have the possibility of introducing multiple intelligences with different types of activities and probably one of the most interesting aspects, we can relate the workshops with the different subjects, in a way the different teachers will include activities which are going to be related with their subjects and in which they are the experts. So the art teacher will make posters, painting activities, etc. The P.E teacher will work with the kinesthetic intelligence, the English teacher would do the activities in English and so on.

I’m conscious about the fact that this is only an idea and there are going to appear lots of problems to solve during the implementation of this project, but I think it would be an incredible experience to see the whole school with all teachers involved in a project that relates literature with lots of subjects.

I would like to know your opinion about this idea, and don’t worry, it hasn’t to be positive, I know there are many things to improve, share your thoughts with me!

Today I am going to share with you the last project we are carrying out, the Aladdin’s workshop; and particularly, the workshop my group and I are preparing: Discovering the cultural secrets of Arabia.

During the last two weeks, we have been preparing a workshop that we are developing next Tuesday, 25^th November, with a group of students from a public school in Alcalá de Henares.

The pillars of this project are the powerful and multiple uses of children films in education. I think that all of us are sure that every film, even those that we think are simple and with a basic plot, can be used in many different ways to present the contents to kids through a motivating, enjoyable and cross-curricular methodology, and interesting and close materials and resources.

For this project, the workshops are devoted to teaching Science contents through English and through Aladdin’s film. For that, we are working on six different workshops, each of them dedicated to one Science topic; using the characters, places, elements and other aspects present in Aladdin’s film as the medium to carry out the teaching-learning process.

In my case, my group decided to work on Arabian culture (“The secrets of Arabia”), as the film is constantly presenting, both directly through the dialogues or songs, or indirectly, by just showing them in the scenes, the main aspects of that area and its culture: places in Arabia, artistic elements such as the decoration of the streets or houses, the music, instruments and dances; market products like food or ornaments, animals, monuments, laws and rules, clothing, social classes, gender differences (men vs. women), religious beliefs, etc.

As you can see, there is an enormous amount of elements that we can work on. However, we are only having twenty minutes to develop the whole workshop, so we have chosen the four following topics for teaching them directly:

1. Geography: Location of Arabia in the world map and the Geography of the country.
2. Market: products sold in markets and ways of buying them.
3. Palace: social classes and laws of Arabia.
4. Palace Gardens: Art, music, instruments and dances.

Furthermore, we have to take into account that we are living in the era of technology, so we are introducing ICTs in almost every corner. Then, the whiteboard will be used to show the maps and to present the Palace rooms in which the students will click to see the different laws of Arabia; and a computer is used to watch the Arabian dance and listen to the song while learning the choreography.

Finally, to conclude the workshop, we are letting the kids use their cameras to feel like tourists and take pictures or selfies in every corner, and we are giving them a souvenir from Arabia to thank them for their visit and wish them a good day.

Is the first time that we have the chance to work with pupils in the university, we sometimes see other groups of mates working with pupils and I have to say that I felt a little bit jealous but now we are the ones that have this challenge.

In class we were deciding which film we were going to deal with and we have had very good options as “The lord of the rings”, “The book of the jungle”, “Mary Poppins”, “Aladdin” and others. So we have to vote the ones that we liked the most and the thing was so equal between “the book of the jungle” and “Aladdin” however “Aladdin” wins. At first sight was a little bit difficult to find the didactic porpoise of this film but as the time goes by every group was thinking on the different things we could teach with this incredible film. After that we presented our topics to the rest of the mates and they told as some advices about where to place the different groups and also other topics that we can relate with the one we have chosen.

Moreover I didn´t remember the film very well so that day in the afternoon I was watching the film to see all the scenes and how funny the Gini was, the next day in my group we were all singing the songs that are displayed in the film, how anybody can remember the songs that well, but my mates did it; now I´m all the time singing it.

I would never imagine doing this at the university, but in my opinion is a very good way to practice for our future jobs, and also for being more prepared and being more involved in the task. I´m so enthusiastic, I count the days to do it and to see all of as dress up like all the characters in the film and also how you we all decorate the university. I hope you are also enjoying with this task. I would like to know what do you think about it and how do you feel?

Do you think we could adapt Disney films to explain science and other subjects to our students?

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.

Are you ready to carry the workshop out? I hope so because I am so excited with that.  To introduce a little bit the topic, I would like to say how the project is going to be developed.

First of all, it is important to mention that we are going to do a real project with real students, thanks to Raquel’s involvement ;).  We know that we have to work hard and make it as fun as possible for children meanwhile they are learning important contents, but I am sure that the results will be really great.

Today, we have had to organize ourselves in groups of four to six people and then, choose one of the topics that Raquel (our bilingual lecturer) has purposed to us. The topics were: The Lord of the Rings, Mary Poppins, Aladdin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and so on. In groups of three, we have selected by voting, the one we would like to work with and finally, it was ALADDIN!!!

As you already know, fairy tales and traditional stories have changed along the time. In class, we had the opportunity to work with the example of Cinderella in which we could find a lot of different versions since it was created. Raquel gave us some internet resources in which we could find the original versions of children’s literature and films.

Surprisingly, Aladdin is one of the stories taken from The Arabian Nights, created around 1709. Its origin is not reliable enough but it is said that the source has not an Arabic origin.  It is believed that the first European translator of The Arabian Nights was Antoine Galland who heard the story from a Syrian storyteller.

Even though the common story is set in an Islamic world, there are a lot of evidences of its Oriental origin.

Some versions were created a long time ago, such as the one you can find in this website: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20916/20916-h/20916-h.htm written by Charles Scribner’s sons in 1909 or the one by The Brothers Grimm, that you can find it here: http://fiction.eserver.org/short/aladdin.html

One of the most impressive aspects for me has been that Aladdin comes from China instead of being an Arabic child, the one we used to know. But…I would like to invite you to comment here some differences and similarities between the Walt Disney version and one of the others. I think you have here enough information of this controversial character.

In my opinion, it is very important to know the origins of the stories we deal with because, that way, we can teach with a wider range of possibilities with our students. I hope our works will be cross-curricular and will be based on multiple intelligences, considering that this topic gives us this enriching opportunity.

I will see you in the Arabian Nights!!