Finally here we are… the last entry. For this post I would like to talk about the activity in which I have reached the highest point of the subject: The Aladdin´s workshop. During this activity I had the possibility of experiment with children what I learned during the subject. It was incredible discover how times runs out, or saw the emotion on the children´s faces.
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.
Hi Carla, I have chosen your post because we had felt more or less the same. It was a great day, but as you told in the post, we had spent too much time to create and performance the university.
And it was funny when you say that the workshop was very different of what you thought, that improvisation is the best word to define how you felt this day, because in my group we though the same!!
At the beginning we had an clear idea of what should we do to do, but when the children came to the university all the thinking start to changes. But we have to be preparing in this situations. What do we have to do if we finish before we think? What happened if we don’t take into account with something or someone? We were all the class at the beginning a little bit nervous but the children didn’t know, and when they finished all of them said that they would like to repeat, so…all I can say, that we were a nice job!!
See you in class!!! <3
Hi carla,
I’ve enjoyed a lot Reading your post. During that moment, many special moments came to my mind. In my opinion the whole class has been working very hard to finish that workshop time successfully and the reason why we worked a lot is simply the children, or not as simpler because, as you said, we needed a lot of time to prepare the corners, the tasks, materials, procedure, etc. But the final results deserved completely that hard work.
As you said Carla, there were some problems that appeared at the beginning, but along the working day these problems were becoming in something more and even more perfect. For instance: the time limits. I think everybody had the same problem. At the beginning, at the time we were teaching the first group of children, someone knocked the door to tell us that we had to let come in to another group of pupils, and we didn’t finish the lesson with the previous one. Another problem that we had to deal with was the communication with the children because they didn’t answer the questions or they were distracted; but this happened at the beginning because, as I said, we were learning from these problems and we were improving them all.
Finally, congratulations Carla! Because when I came into your ‘jaima’, everything impressed me completely. You achieved to make a perfect atmosphere for children to enjoy and I’m really sure that they did it.