I think that is good for kids to work on drama because it has great benefits. First of all, working on drama can help those students who are shy and it is a really big obstacle for them when it comes to speaking in front of the classmates. Every child deserves the opportunity to express themselves using body language. It is important for them to think about how to transmit different ideas without talking or just thinking how to represent an image with the help of the classmates working in groups.

It also helps students to make their relationships better between themselves. They have to communicate and agree on what is the most accurate way to reproduce what they want to do, taking into account every single voice as they are all part of a big group.

On the other hand, working on drama improves your capacity to concentrate and to focus on something easily. It transmits different values and makes children think. That’s why drama is used by teachers to work misbehavior in the class. It helps a lot as I could see this with my own eyes during my second work placement. The potential that empathy plays during this process using drama can improve certain situations and reactions of the students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2pW5SZw3Dk

I highly recommend you to watch this video. It is about the University of Sydney and the way they work with drama in a primary education school. Among the people who appears in the video is Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who explains the importance of working with drama for the personality and the attitude of children. It is amazing how, through feelings and emotions, children engage with the learning process with ease, which shows you that, as teachers, we must work with drama in a cross-curricular way in order to offer our students the experience to learn, have fun and build their personality at the same time.

Lourdes

Helping students to answer questions about Arabic culture really left me fascinated, as they knew so many things and concepts that I thought would be difficult for them to understand. I loved the way that they helped each other, it was fantastic. Furthermore, they contributed during the whole process and none of them misbehaved or acted in a bad way, which helped us finish every task and complete them successfully.

But the best thing that I took from this experience was their enthusiasm and engagement to overcome different tasks. Children really love what they do during the learning process if you, as a teacher, love and like what you do too. This passion is extremely easy to transmit. It was great to see the children’ faces when we performed the different tasks. We provoke different feelings, which engaged and motivated them to know what was going to happen next.

Additionally, this project also helped me personally to get to know more about my strengths and weaknesses. We worked with children in a real environment and we needed to react in the correct way when something that we did not plan or expected happened. So for a short time I imagined that we were working as we do on a work placement.

Organizing the jaima was hard work. We wanted to do our best working as a group and for the time we had I think that we worked very efficiently. We had to keep in mind all the things that we needed, not just for the jaima, but also for the tasks, taking in consideration that some students were celiac or had another type of allergic reaction when it came to food.

I would also like to mention the fact that I had a presentation (as other classmates) just after the workshop that made me feel a little worried and nervous. I think that this situation could have been handled in another way. It would have helped the students in future workshops if teachers take this into consideration and try to move it to another day or rearrange it in the best way.

Finally, I cannot finish this post without thanking the students and the teachers who took their time to come all the way to the university to participate in the presentations. I hope they had a great time and they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Lourdes

Today I am writing to you in order to share a magnificent activity to work on poetry in the classroom.

As we all know, poetry is the great benefit as it fosters Social and Emotional learning. The students put in practice their imagination to express themselves working with grammar and language itself. It is a different way to work on grammar and identify the different types of words in a nice easy way. It makes you think and reflect about the type of word that you would write about and the reason why you have chosen it, which relates poetry with their real lives and gives meaning to the whole process.

Therefore, poetry gives us the chance to work through scaffolding as they are able to use the language even when they do not have a great knowledge of the vocabulary.

With this activity called Word scramble, students can work in pairs or individually. It is not a complicated task and it engages children to work on poetry. You can find the link below:

What do you need for the activity?

-Cards

-Worksheet

-Rubric

The cards are organized by colours; every colour represents a type of word: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, prepositions and endings that can be added as (ing, ed, it or the).

Some of the verbs can be classified as a noun so it has two colours.

Also included are some blank colour sheets  so students can add their own words into the project.

There is a rubric so they can assess themselves and the teacher can also score them.

The students can take any word from the cards given and create their own poem. After students create it they feel very proud and they want to share it with the class.

As Betsy says in the video, the students also think about images when they write their poems so you could ask your students to draw and represent the words in a picture.

This way we are working the linguistic intelligence, the visual special intelligence and the intrapersonal intelligence.

This is a powerful idea as you can choose the words that you want. Imagine that you are working the ecosystem with them, then it would be amazing if you use some of the words from the ecosystem vocabulary to work in a cross curricular way. For example some of the nouns in this case could be:  river, chain, animals or herbivores.

The worksheet with the blank in colours simply gives you the structure in order to give coherence to the poem and to follow some rules that you should have previously work on with them in the class.

It is a good way to start working on poetry and to reinforce what they know. Once completed, the children can create the word that they want instead of giving them the worksheet. Or they can create their words instead of the teacher giving them to them.

I hope you like this activity and I encourage you to use it in your private English classes if you can. If you have any ideas do not hesitate to send me a comment.

Lourdes

In this third post I would like to share with you my opinion about the role of women in Disney’ stories through the time and why it is important to read these books or to watch these movies at school.

Firstly, I would like to comment about the role of each character that you can see below.

Snow White. It was first published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, do you remember them from the seminar? From all of the fairy tales that I could remember from my childhood, Snow White is without a doubt, the film I used to watch the most. The role of this lady is clear, taking care of the dwarfs, cleaning the house all the time and tidying up. She is a very beautiful lady who fell in love at first sight, which shows that superficiality and unrealism as the only way that she will be happy is getting married with a handsome prince.

Aurora, is a fairy tale based from “The Beauty sleeping in the Wood” by Charles Perrault, published in 1697 and later on by the Brothers Grimm. She is a princess form the English kingdom who has to abandon the castle for being cursed by Maleficent when she was a baby. The three god fairies took Aurora to a house in the woods where she could be raised safely by them. We all know that never happens and she finally pricks her finger on a spinning wheel spindle. She is in a sleepy mode till a handsome man comes and kisses her. The true story is that women, once more, are just going to be happy and safe when they have a man by their side.

Jasmine, is a character from the story Aladdin, taken from “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights” based on the role of the woman in the Middle East, where generally, women are under their fathers thumb, they do cannot make their own decisions to get married or give an opinion about something. In this case, this lady is a princess who cannot leave from the castle. She dreams about the world outside the walls and wishes that she could marry someone she really wants. In spite of this, her dad wants her to marry a man with status as the most important thing that is reflected in this story is the social class that you belong to. Finally she meets Aladdin, a poor and nice guy who wants to make her feel happy showing her his type of life to make her think that to be happy you do not need to live in a mansion or to have very expensive jewels.  However, this story continues to show that there is a need for a man, his love and recognition.

Ariel. The tale was first published in 1837 by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. This tale sacrifices everything to be with a man, her life, family and friends.

Belle, is a tale from the version “Beauty and the Beast”. It was published in 1756 by the French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Belle’s dad is an inventor who gets lost on the way back from a conference. Once Belle sees her dad’s horse without him, she goes to the woods to try to find him. She finds a castle where her dad is. Once she is in the castle she finds objects that can talk and a beast, a nobleman who was cursed by a sorceress when he didn’t want to offer her help when she needed it. The only way that the Beast can be a man again is finding his true love. Belle is a beautiful lady who is locked in a castle in exchange for her dad who is very sick and needs to rest at home. Once more we notice how the role of the lady is reproduced again, being inside a house, keeping everything clean and tidy. The only way she is going to be happy is with her true love even if she has to give up her old life.

Cinderella, a tale wrote by Giambattista Basile who published the story in 1634. Cinderella is a lady who lives with her evil stepmother and two evil stepsisters. She is in charge of cleaning after them, cooking them food and resolving their problems when they have nothing to do with her. Her life is not easy, she lost her mum when she was a kid and she doesn’t receive love from anyone. Her only friends are the animals who come to visit her and sign with her. One day, the prince sends all the young ladies an invitation for a ball. A ball that becomes in a gangway so he can choose one lady from all of them to get married. Cinderella really wants to go to the ball, with the help of the animals she makes her own dress, the one that is going to be destroyed by their jealous stepsister on the night of the ball. Her Fairy-God mother appears to make her a beautiful dress, a carriage, horses, a coachman and footmen. She looks know like someone she is not really so someone can fell in love with her. Finally, the prince sees her at the Ball, dances with her and falls in love with her, love at first sight once more.

Now let’s comment on some new roles the princesses are beginning to have in modern day films. I am showing you just two examples. I have chosen these two because I love these movies and I think there is an important moral to learn behind the stories.

Brave, this film was produced by Katherine Sarafian with John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter. The film came out in 2012 in Spain. There is a princess named Merida, she is an archer. The main idea that is transmitted with this film is the relationship that a mum and daughter have and the opposition that sometimes is needed to show what is really wanted. This film helps us to understand the position that our parents need to take and ourselves with them. This is the reason why we have arguments with our parents at some stages but in the end, we understand why they say certain things to us as they just want what´s best. What I like the most about this film is that the princess is now in action, she can do the things she has always wanted to. She does not depend on anyone and a love story is not involved in plot. Merida wants to resolve her problems on her own, finding solutions. If she is in danger it is ok as she can get out of trouble. Merida is an example of the role of some women that have to fight to achieve their aims even when she does not have any support.

Tangled, opened in Spain in 2010. The tail is called Rapunzel, I am sure most of you know who this lady is, it was written by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812. In the film “Tangled”, Rapunzel discovers that it is not just a house that needs cleaning and chores, but something else. She is not really rescued by a handsome man, it is true that there is a guy in this story but she is the one that has to negotiate with him to get out the tower were she is trapped while her stepmom is out trying to find some special paints for her daughter’s birthday. This film draws attention to the power of women as any woman can carry out their purposes if they really want to. The lady that is nothing without a man is not reproduced in this film. Rapunzel can do things by herself, she is clever and she has lots of talents. The role of woman has changed; Rapunzel is not under someone’s thumb.

And that’s it. I hope you liked my post and I would be very happy if you commented on it and to share your opinion with me. I think we have to work with these fairy tales at school to make children think critically about the role of these fairytales in their favorite stories. I remember when I used to watch these films when I was a child, I just to love them and they are part of my childhood. Now is our time to make students think, it is important for them. They need to be able to identify wrong from right, in stories, in films, anything that is related to their lives during their primary education period and, as teachers we help to guide them.

Lourdes

Apart from this, the fact that Seuss was a cartoonist and an ilustrator says a lot about his creativity and capacity to represent the worlds he used to believe in when he was writing. A very complete author with morals in mind in every story he wrote as he wanted the children to understand the world they lived in. Additionally, Seuss  cared a lot about social problems, which I admire, as using stories to relay social norms, trends and even rules is easier diluted within a childrens story.

I emplore you to read some of his work especially the cat in the hat, as it was written during the great depression and it shows how to connect with a real situation through the characters in the book.

Therefore, after reading only but a handful of Dr Seuss´s work, I am now a great fan and will endeavour to continue reading his other weird and wonderful adaptations on the world that we live in.

I hope all of you are having a great weekend!

This is going to be my first post and I thought it will be interesting to write about my experience using jolly phonics in the private English classes I give to my little students from the second term of Primary education in San Sebastián de los Reyes.

As we all have had the opportunity to know about this way of teaching phonetics in the Literature class, I said to myself, why not try this with my kids so I made some cards instead of buying or printing material because I didn’t know if it was going to work or if I was going to achieve my aim during the lesson.

I have to say that I was incredibly surprised about how easy it was for the kids to remember every single sound in just one lesson (in the first class we just did five sounds). I tried to teach them new vocabulary so it was going to be catchier for them if they didn’t know the meaning of the word that was associated with the sound.

Also, if you are really expressive or even silly with them when you pronounce every sound, the kids really love it. With some of the words that were difficult for them to know the meaning I did the action related to the word and they immediately knew what I was talking about.

Last but not least, I should mention the fact that I didn’t find enough jolly phonics materials on their own site as you have to buy the majority of it. There is a part on the website that says “free resources” where you can download some worksheets and stuff.

I’m looking forward to my next post on the blog and can’t wait to read other people’s experiences.

Lourdes

I´m Lourdes Diaz, a 4th year Primary education student from Malaga. I am new to the Alcala area and have moved here due to a mobility program (sicue) which has given me the oportunity to move from my hometown uni (Malaga) to the wonderful Cardinal Cisneros. Although I´m studying in Alcala I actually live in San Sebastian De Los Reyes.

I would like to learn as much as possible, not just with my classes, but with this blog as we can learn through sharing our own ideas. I already have my own blog on wordpress that I used last year for my disertation. If you would like to have a look please go onto my profile.

I hope you like our little learning community.

Lourdes