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.

Most of the presented authors work not only in telling stories the also produce they books and draw them and they created  very good books, most of the books where attractive for the children because the story was closer to the children, and others have a moral inside, which could help readers to solve problems and learnt from them. This is the reason why some of these books are so famous and so well sold. Also we don’t have to forget that the drawings are so important because if the book has good drawings and it is related with the story it’s going to be easier for the children to read the book.

I didn’t know most of the authors but some others I recognised because of its famous books as Roald Dhal wit Matilda and Charlie and the chocolate factory, and other authors of whom I see the films based on their books as E. B. White with Stuart little, or even the series as in the case of Marc Brown with Arthur, and many others. Knowing which were the motivations of the authors to write those incredible stories was interesting besides.

I decided to talked about this because in a no longer future we will have the task of encourage our children to read and it’s not going to be easier decide which book is going to be better for them and which on is going to be more interested for them so probably we will wake up something inside us that inspire us to create a book for our students, who knows…

Here I let you a website in which you could find different tools to create books for our future students or even to make them create their own stories, moreover it is also explained what every tool it’s for.

• http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Writing+Tools

This other website is a blog in which its author shows 5 website that create books with video, that’s seems fantastic to create personalized books.

• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/08/5-free-tools-for-creating-video-book.html#.VEqJwiKsWSp

This type of website are a good resource to create books and help our students develop their imagination and their creativity, I hope you like this post and you find it useful. I want to know your opinion. Thanks for reading.

Start voting answering this post.

And the award goes to…

Image taken from truedemocracyparty.net

That is why we had to work in groups of three people, in most cases with those who, for any reason, we hadn’t had the chance to do it before, and prepare a 5-minute presentation to try and convince our classmates that the author we had become experts in (or kind of), deserved to be chosen as the most relevant in Children’s Literature.

It must be said that I wasn’t aware of the exciting life that most of them had/are having, and I am truly convinced that Roald Dahl, which was the one that my group was in charge of presenting (thanks Ali and Carmen!), should be at the very top of that list. Not only was he a writer, but also a pilot and even a spy. Moreover, his strong desire to help his children, made him design a valve to solve one of his son’s medical conditions… He was a truly interesting man.

Anyway, is it enough (having an exciting life, I mean) to be considered as the best author? Probably not, but if you scratch a little bit, you will find that he won not only some of the most important prizes regarding Children Literature, but also gained the respect of his profession. Not everybody can say that there is a prize named after them, nor a Museum devoted to his works.

Nevertheless, every minute of the presentations was worthy, because the other groups did a great work introducing David Shannon and his No, David!, Eric Carle and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Julia Donaldson and The Gruffalo, Maurice Sendak with Where The Wild Things Are, Marc Brown and his aardvark Arthur, Dr. Seuss and The Grinch, or E.B. White with Stuart Little. And there are more yet to be presented.

I guess that next time I go to a bookshop, I will look at the Children’s Literature shelves with more acknowledging eyes.

In any case, it could be possible to deal with some improvements. On the one hand, I would have like to know and to present authors in a closer way. For instance, It would be fantastic to talk about them in a reading circle. On the  other hand, time was too short, so we could just talk about general ideas.

Due to these facts, I consider interesting to add some ideas about the author (Roald Dahl) that I was investigating with my partners Carmen Rojo and Loli Casco.

It was great to know about the considerable contribution that he made to children’s literature. Even nowadays, his legacy persists in an active and collaborative way. This is possible thanks to Roald Dahl Museum that works really hard to make possible that children can be closed and engaged to Roald Dahl’s life and books through many different, creative and active activities that are celebrated in the Museum. According to the Official Website, the museum presents three main galleries:

• Boy gallery. It is about Roald Dahl’s childhood, his love of chocolate and his schoolboy pranks (children’s jokes).
• Solo gallery. It is related to his journey to Africa. Visitors can appreciate  how Roald Dahl’s real-life adventures led him to become a writer. They can experience the atmosphere of Roald Dahl’s original Writing Hut (small and isolated house, a kind of shelter).
• The story centre. This is the Museum’s creative hub where the displays will inspire visitors own writing and story-making. They can listen to top tips from their favorite authors, make a stop-frame animation, sit in a replica of Roald Dahl’s writing chair.

Considering that it is difficult to visit the museum, it is interesting to have a look to the museum galleries through the Virtual Museum Tour.

I would like to end up this post with an inspiring quote of this exceptional author:

“You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can”.

First image: Roald Dahl’s writing hut

Second image: Replica of Roald Dahl´s writing hut

Third image: Replica of Roald Dahl’s writing chair

First image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/14902536

Second and third images from http://www.roalddahl.com/

I hope you are all enjoying our comments.

For my second post I decided to talk about Julia Donaldson. This week in class we had the opportunity to know more about some English authors that write books for children. In my case, I had to look for information and I got very impressed about some of the things I found.

Julia is an English author that was into literature since she was very small, when she was used to write shows and choreograph ballets for her and her sister. She decided to study Drama and French at Bristol University, where she met a guitar-playing medic with whom she married.

The first thing that impressed me a lot is to know how she started: with busking. This is the practice of performing in public places and she did this with her husband, Malcolm. This led them to perform in TV programs for children and then even to publish some Cd’s.

Other thing that caught my attention and that I think it’s very important is her capacity to work with other people. As I said, she worked with her husband, but also with other professionals like the illustrator Axel Scheffler. An anecdote about her relationship with Axel is that they do not work “together”, Julia writes something and Axel sends her letters with the pictures he thinks are good for her books.

It was also very interesting for me that huge amount of different books she has written: poems, songs, educational books, audiobooks, phonic books…

There are a lot of interesting things that we could take into account about this author, for this reason, if you want to know more about her, here is her official web page.

From my point of view, this was a great chance to know what kind of literature we can show to our students. As we grew up reading Spanish literature, it is more or less easy for us to know what types of books are good for our future students but, in the case of English authors, I have to say that I was very lost.

In summary, I would like to say that I really enjoyed looking for information about Julia Donaldson and also hearing what my classmates had to say about other English authors.

To finish with, I would like to mention the other authors we dealt with in class, just in case you want to know them for your classes ;). They are Eric Carle, Beatrix Potter, E.B. White, David Shannon, Marc Brown, Roald Dahl, Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss and A.A. Milne.

I invite you to comment on the post and share your ideas!