First of all we created new characters, creatures that are related to us and have some of our characteristics, or maybe not, maybe it’s our antagonist but all of them have something special that have been created starting from our imagination and they have a little bit of magic on them. After creating this magic, malicious, benevolent, hero we have mixed it with all the characters created by our mates; then we made groups of 5 – 6 people and then we picked again other characters different to the ones that we have created, so we have new ones.

Later on we will have to create and develop a story with those characters to create a poster for our new movie and then sell it to someone who will be interested on bringing our story to the big screen. We will see the results this week…

As a result of this activity, I was thinking on different ways to translate this to our future classrooms

and which has first come to my mind is “the traveller book” I’m sure most of you know what is this but for the ones who don’t know it… Is a book in which the students create their own story we can begin it in white or we can give them the beginning of the story, after that one of our pupils is going to take the book to its house to continue the story with the help of his parents. The main aim is that the students create a new page for the common story but taking into account what was written first to give the story the sense it has to have.

This could be another way to make our students create their own story and being creative and motivate moreover the attendant of the book could read the new part of the story on Mondays and the rest of the class could draw a picture based on its mates part of the story and then select one of the pictures from all and paste it in the book to make it funnier.

Could you imagine other activities like this to create collaborative and cooperative stories or books? I would be pleased of reading your comments and thanks for your attention.

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.

This reminds me to the first lesson of this subject. The summer had just finished, another year began (last year in the university). It was the beginning of the end. That moment seems so near and jet so far to me. We started that class in a similar way that some people begin their daily life, with a song. A song with a strong and deep message. This melody has sound in my mind during these last weeks (like a mantra) and has given and gives me strength to work hard every day.  It was a fantastic idea to present the subject with that song that gave us so much important ideas in just 3 minutes.

Can you remember that moment? Surely, this video refreshes your memory.

At first sight, through that song, we could deduce that along the subject we were going to have fun while learning new important contents. Secondly, and as a consequence of the first idea, we could have an approach about what the subject was going to deal with, that is children literature elements such as songs, poetry, theatre… Sometimes, the best way to introduce new contents is not based on talk about it, but to show examples.

And I feel alright, and we’ll feel alright 
Cause we’ll work it out, yeah we’ll work it out 

Furthermore, the song transmitted us, that we should work hard, but the teacher was going to be with us, during the whole learning process, that we should not feel alone. There would be someone who wanted to encourage and to support us. This idea can be applied  also to these last years. Surely, all of us have a special person who supported him during the best and worst moments.

I’ll be your light, your match, your burning sun 
I’ll be the bright, in black, that’s making you run
I’ll be your ghost, your game, your stadium
I’ll be your fifty thousand clapping like one 

Finally, we, as future teachers, should understand the song message as a philosophy of education. Apart from the best methodologies, resources, materials… we need something much more important, vocation. We should work really hard on this till the love runs out.

I’ll be doing this, if you ever doubt
Till the love runs out, ’til the love runs out

“Love Runs Out” Lyrics

As you can see, this song it quite significant for me. I would love to know your opinion in this topic: Did you feel the same in that lesson? Are there other important songs about your learning experience? Which ones? Which would be your BSO of this moment/subject/term/degree?

The more, the better

Last year I made one for my little cousin it was handmade, I think it was a very good present for him because he could always read his story and he will enjoy it because I make it using different textures and now that he is a little bit older he can touch it and see it as many times he want. In my opinion this kind of books are a very good resource because the child feel involve in the story and he pays more attention to it because he is the one who is living the adventures or that he is involved in the weft we could let him some blank pages to continue it by himself and make their imagination and creativity work.

In relation to this types of books other kind are the ones with pops ups like this one:
They were fantastic because as the same time that you were reading you could see what was happening in a 3D dimension and there were other books in which there were secrets and you have to find them and you could play with the pop ups it was so funny.

There are plenty of books of this kind but the best ones are the ones we made telling our own stories I tend to think that because you can invent your own story including your own drawings and that gives the book a lot of personality. There isn´t a perfect formula to write a book we just have to let our imagination fly, start writing words and scrawls to make the first ideas come out and then put them into an order then things everything will fall into its place.

Personally, I feel strongly that we should encourage our students to write books, poems and little stories to make their imagination blow, and be more creative besides there are going to became richer, because they will learn more vocabulary and they will express themselves better.

Finally I would like to talk about interactive books, this type of books are popular know because it’s been more common to have tablets and electronic devices at home for the use of the smallest of the house and are a very good resource to read them stories but we have to read stories as well to variety of books that children read.

I will like to know your opinion about this, and if you have ever had the chance to have a personalized book. Thanks for ridding and I hope you like 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!

On Monday, our teacher prepared new activities for us that were linked with poetry. The first activity that we did had a close relation with new technologies. In this activity, first we were divided in small groups of four or three people, then we had to search on YouTube for the poetry videos that we did and choose one of them.
They can be watched in this direction: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrzI70O2odaLe7LN52gX7Q)

After choosing, we had to create a QR code for the video that we had chosen using the website: https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/. Once we had the QR code ready; we started to think about an activity that can be done with the video that we have chosen, such as adding a new strophe or drawing objects that appear or should appear in the poetry, etc. You may think about the purpose of this activity; the aim of the activity was to print the QR codes with the activities suggested and place them in the corridors of the university, so that people could do the activities that we created thanks to their smartphone´s camera.

By the time we finished the activity we started with the next one which was linked with creation, art and visual spatial intelligence. The activity began when the teacher place in different parts of the class some sheets with a poetry in them, but this poetries had a special characteristic; its verses form shapes of objects that were related with them. We had to go read each sheet and create another example using the technique which appears in the sheet.

In conclusion, I have to say that I really liked the activities that we did, because they gave the opportunity to develop imagination and creativity, also they were motivational for us and they would be motivational for children as well, but a very interesting point that the activities suggested is the sense of continuity, I mean that the videos that we did some weeks ago have been used again for another activity. Furthermore, I think that this could be used in some many ways in schools for letting the children create a visible progression in the continuity of the activities that they do.

As a consequence of the previous ideas, if we bear in mind the didactic implications of this conception, some of us have a lack of confidence in teaching poetry.  Because of these reasons, lessons such as the one that we had in the subject Children’s Literature in English, can be quite useful to improve our literature didactic skills.  During the first part of the lesson, we knew some interesting and useful websites to introduce poetry to our future students. And we prepared a poem performance in groups. It was a fantastic approach to know more about teaching and learning poetry.

From then on, I decided to make some research on the teaching of poetry and I found a source that could be useful for us:

The Poetry Trust, according to its official website, is “one of the UK’s flagship poetry organizations, delivering a year-round live and digital program, creative education opportunities, courses, prizes and publications”.

One of the most interesting publications of this organization is  The Poetry Toolkit (foolproof recipes for teaching poetry in the classroom). It is a guide with lots of activities and didactic possibilities that can be applied in the classroom. Besides, this document reflects on how hard it can be for teachers and students to understand poetry. It also encourage teachers to try the proposed activities by themselves, before they use these ones in their work with students. The main aim is that teachers gain an idea of the nature of each task and its possibilities.

An interesting activity designed by Amanda Dalton is Poem Jigsaws (Choosing the right word). To develop this activity, we provide pairs of students with a poem that has been cut up into words that they have to put together again as they want. The aim of the activity is not based on reconstruct the original composition, but to create something new and original. Through this task we help our students to understand some features of poetry such as: word order, syntax and language.

Due to the fact that we, as future teachers, should try these activities, I prepared my own Poem Jigsaw using a sample of the poem A Birthday written by Christina G. Rosetti:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit;

Set of words that belongs to the original poem A Birthday.

Final result: a Poem Jigsaw.

In the described publication there are much more interesting activities that we can use with pupils. I recommend you to read this useful publication and to do other new activities.  

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.

This is my fourth post, and I would like to explore a little bit the emotional outcomes of reading and writing fairytales and other stories in the classroom.

Fairytales are usually seen as something innocent, created for children by adults, with the only aim of being amusing. Sometimes, we try and go deeper into the stories, and the result is that we get to the conclusion that they also transmit values and pieces of advice. But my question is: Is it everything fairytales have to offer? My answer is a big round NO.

When the writer creates a story, and when it is a good one, all of a sudden the characters are brought to life. They have something to say, they are somebody, and the reader or the listener will connect with their emotions, feel sorry when they are sad, compassionate when they suffer, full of joy when they succeed. And all of this wouldn’t be possible without empathy.

I am sure that all of you understand this term perfectly, but just in case, let me introduce you a definition by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary , according to which, Empathy is

the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else’s feelings.

Why is it important?, and how is it related to health? It is important because when we are teaching literature, or English, or whichever subject you prefer, we are also transmitting values, helping our pupils develop to their full potential, and it includes allowing them to be themselves, to build self-confidence and to be able to understand others’ needs, which is a proof of mental health.

What does it have to do with Fairytales? In fact, a lot. In order to be told or read, a tale needs to be created. And it is at that point of creation, where the pupils have to imagine their characters, and to provide them with a personality to make them deeper and catchy for the reader. Focusing on the character’s aims, dreams and hopes, fears and faults, the pupils will use  the language they know, the literary figures we have taught them, but also their own experience about life.

For example, a kid who is happy, will more likely create happy characters, and it is possible that only good things happen to them. On the other hand, if another child is going through something, it is possible that this process of creation can help him/her to externalize needs, fears, or experiences, just like they were the character’s and not theirs.

This is one reason that makes children prefer stories whose characters have something in common with them. If they go on an adventure, so are the readers. If they become friends with a vampire, suddenly it turns from a horrifying creature, to the best of companies. If they are mice who can cook, they will want to be super chefs.

And what about you? can you see any other reason to consider fairytales good for health? I am looking forward to read them!