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.

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!!

Those horrific stories were originally passed on orally from generation to generation until some writers, such as Perrault, Brothers Grimm or Walt Disney decided to convert the tales into books and films, making some changes until the stories evolved to the current happy tales we all know.

This is what we were learning during the last week’s medium group session, when we read two versions of Cinderella, Perrault’s and Grimm Brothers’, and compared them with the one we have watched in the Disney film. I was really impressed about the evolution of the story and the big differences among the versions; and, as I really liked discovering this, I would like to share with you the real cruel stories of some beautiful tales that we all know (I wish I do not ruin your childhood… :P).

Firstly, we can start with the innocent Little Red Riding Hood. In our version, she disobeys the advice of her mother in her way to visit her grandmother and walks slowly and entertains through the dangerous forest. Then, as the wolf is faster, he arrives earlier to grandmother’s house. He eats her, dresses up with grandma’s clothes, waits for the girl and eats her too. But a hunter discovers what happened and takes a knife to open the wolf’s abdomen; so, Caperucita and her grandmother go out of the wolf, they fill his abdomen with stones and finally the thirsty wolf goes to drink water to a lake, falls down and sinks because of his weight. However, the original version is more sadistic, as the wolf makes Little Red Riding Hood drink her grandmother’s blood before carving up and eating her. (You can find the different versions of Little Red Riding Hood here).

Goldilocks and the Three Bears is one of the most changed stories. We think that Goldilocks is a curious little girl who discovers the three bears’ house and touches some furniture and eat some soup before she sleeps in one of their beds. When the bears come, they get angry because someone has been in their house, but when they find Goldilocks in the bed, she is faster that the bears and escapes through the window before they kill or eat her; or, in other more recent versions, the bears behave well and even help her. Contrary to that, in the original version, Goldilocks was an old and hungry woman that was tortured by the bears and impaled in the spire of the bell tower. (You can find other versions of Goldilocks and The Three Bears here and here).

In case of The Lion King, the king is killed by his jealous brother and his son wants revenge. Although Rosencrantz (Timon) and Guildenstem (Pumba) try to distract him, he finally kills the jealous brother. And actually, in some versions, everyone dies.

Finally, I would like to share with you some interesting links where you can find more information about this topic: all versions of one tale, the history of the evolution of some stories; the reasons why each version was like it was depending on the social, economic, political and cultural circumstances, etc.:

• The real stories behind these Disney Movies will ruin your childhood
• The real stories behind 9 Disney Movies
• Top 10 gruesome fairy tale origins
• Children tales as they used to be (in Spanish)
• When children literature was for adults (in Spanish)
• The Real Snow white: Maria Sophia Margaretha Catharina von Erthal in Carmen’s post in this blog.