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!

Yesterday I read an article at the page of “Anatarambana literatura infantil” about a book that last days was a cause of lots of controversies, the book is “Nicolás tiene dos papás” which translated into English is “Nicolás has two dads”. It is a Chilean book which, taking into account the huge sells numbers will appear in many schools, in the book we can see a very simple story of a boy who lives with his two dads, and they are a really happy family, the whole story is based in very simple sentences and images related with the pictures.

First of all I thought that the critics would focus on the idea of the family of Nicolás (of course the book received some hard critics from the religious institutions) but lots of the negative critics were based on another point, the literacy content. In the article I read the author criticizes the book not because he consider that the content was inappropriate, but just because if speaking about words, the book doesn´t offer too much, the author consider that the book is the perfect example of a book which idea of the content is quite good, but its literature value is terrible.

Is true that the history of Nicolás is a very minimalistic and poor in words creation, maybe the authors should focus not only on writing books with goods values like family values or a book that promotes respect to all the people but also it should offer some stories, some action and emotions, some relation between the different situations and words that the pupils will learn while reading the book.

My surprise and the interesting point of the article is the recommendation of another book about the same topic called ¡En familia! Written by Alexandra Maxeiner and Anke Kuhl. The difference between this book and the previous one is huge, “¡En Familia!” is also a simple book but it shows some real social situations, uses more sentences and makes the students to learn real facts about the different types of families and the differences between them.

I would like to know your opinion about this article and also to share some links about the topic with you.

Link to the online version of the book: http://www.movilh.cl/documentacion/nicolas-tiene-dos-papas.html

The article link: http://anatarambana.blogspot.com.es/2014/11/nicolas-tiene-dos-papas.html

An article that recommends another book about the different types of families: http://anatarambana.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/libro-recomendado-en-familia-de.html

During my first year of Practicum in CEIP Cristobal Colón the students had a small library in each classroom, it was a surprise for me taking into account that in the school there is a library already but when I asked my tutor about it she told me that the “big” library was mainly used by teachers so they decided to make a small place with books for children in each classroom. That space was mainly used when someone finished an activity really quickly or there are only few minutes until the class will finish, then they could take a book they want and read it. In my class the students also had a reading hour on Fridays but on those hours instead using the library they had in class, all the pupils were reading the same book and after that they were doing different activities about the pages they read.

During my second year of Practicum in Gredos San Diego the way of using the books was a real surprise for me, they didn’t had a classroom library but instead of that, each one of the students had to bring everyday a book he/she likes to the school, the curious thing was that they used to read every day after the break for ten minutes, in order to calm down and get the perfect mood to start with the class, this technique got so popular in the class that my teacher used it also when she considered that the students are not focused enough, or if the class before was Physical Education and the pupils were nervous. In Gredos San Diego there was also a reading class and it was on Fridays. But it was a little bit different, because as in Cristobal Colón that reading class was just reading and doing activities, in Gredos it was more than that, after reading we were discussing, and asking open questions to the children, also making competitions in groups with questions in order to make it more active and cooperative.

In my personal opinion I have to say that in the first school (CEIP Cristobal Colón) the activities were not developed to motivate the student but only to check if they comprehend the stories, but a good point is that they had a small library with appropriate books in each class. In fact in the second school (Gredos San Diego) they hadn’t the library but the activities of the reading classes were done to motivate the students to keep reading.

During this post I would like to tell you about an activity we did this week about some of the most manful authors in the area of the children’s literature. In this activity we made groups of three people approximately and each group had an author allocated. The whole activity consists in getting information about our author and after that presenting it in front of the rest of our mates. Honestly I have to say that I really love this kind of activities in which there is a cooperative learning involved, that is because in one part the group which is presenting is teaching and that’s a great training, and on the other hand we have the other group which is going to be not only learning but also watching their peers and getting ideas about ways of teaching and also things to improve and good points.

So the author allocated to my group was David Shannon, who is not only an author but also an illustrator, in my opinion the most incredible thing about David Shannon is the fact that he wrote his first book at the age of 5, it is called “No David!” and it is composed mostly by illustrations, the book narrates the story of a child which is scolded during the whole story with the words “No David”. An incredible fact is that the most important awards in David Shannon’s life are because of that book and the first one he wrote. The School Library Journal called the book as the Best Book of the Year, and it was on the New York Times on the Best Illustrated Book list.

I consider it is a really great author, and even more in the first steps of the children with the literature, taking into account that David Shannon’s books are based in illustration and there isn’t too much text in them, which will make the children easier to read it and understand it. Also a really interesting thing of our author that I would like to mention is a quote we found in which David says “I try to have fun when I’m making a book” and I consider that is one of the most important things to take into account but not only if speaking about books, also if speaking about teaching, I really believe that if we will try to have fun while teaching, our students will also have fun learning :).

And it was a great surprise for me when Raquel (our teacher) decided to show us some examples of a good storytelling.

We saw a video of an English storyteller named Michael Rosen about a chocolate cake, it was one of the most exciting stories I ever heard but not because of the story, which is interesting, but because of the way of speaking and representing of the author, he makes the story really funny and interesting, he creates the story in a way in which he is the main character and represent it in a really exaggerated way with a lot of gestures, mimic, screaming and noises in the story.

It surprised me to the point that I decidedto look for more stories and I found more stories about a watch, washing up and others shorter ones.

The topic was really interesting so I decided that I should show the story to some of my friends that has not a good level of English and check if they understood the story, and as I thought they got the whole idea of what is Michael Rosen talking about, not because of the words (they understood some of them) but because of the whole context of the video.

The class after that we returned to some videos of this brilliant novelist, but this time we were not only listening, but we were telling the story with the author, the first time we just listened to the story and the second one we represented the whole story with the help of the video at the same time. It was great, firstly I felt a little bit embarrassed but then I realized this is something really fantastic to learn because, in some way or another, all of us will work with children, and sometimes we will tell them some stories, I would like my stories would be as interesting as Michael Rosen’s ones.

Chocolate Cake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeS6U_OcE4

Michael Rosen’s website: http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/