Students from the center CP Daoiz y Velarde came to the University Center Cardenal Cisneros to work on: “Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp”

The “Workshop” project began a few weeks ago. The project was to choose a story known by most children and see what primary content could relate to it and create activities for children. Among all my classmates we choose a topic, the choice was a bit difficult, we had to choose between stories like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, The Lord of the Rings, etc. Eventually the story chosen was “Aladdin”.
After this election we had to decide the topic (related to Aladdin) that we would develop. Some of them were: meals, the market, the desert, geography, etc.; and after that, choose the activities which we were going to do with children. In this proposal we suggested changes in activities, which of them interest us more to work with children, etc.
After weeks of hard work, everything was ready for students. Nerves were close to the surface, the six groups were around the corridors of the principal building. Each group was decorated in a different scenario of Aladdin’s movie also you could see some Aladdin, Jasmines, tigers, Jaffars or Genies running with flying carpets, magic lamps and all kind of things from the Arabian culture.
In my group, we were working on the desert. The activities that we did with the students were related with the traditional clothing of the inhabitants of the desert, and the wildlife in places like oasis.
When the first nerves were gone, everything was great. The kids enjoyed every place and we enjoy working with them.
As a conclusion said that I believe that these kinds of activities are great for children because with them you can bring the contents in their textbooks to a story that they know from very small. On the other hand I also think it is good for us as future teachers because it is not the same experience that we have when we are in a school during our practical time and also it is another way to prepare us for our next future as teachers, although it is very exhausting.

My experience with poetry (and I think most of my colleagues) has basically been the study of famous authors, memorizing poems and even the adventure of creating a poem yourself without any help.
When we started with the activity “The island” I was very surprise with the following video:
“The Poetry Friendly Classroom: teachers on writing” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JRzbPP_66Q
This video shows you how to scaffold children when creating their own poetry: First students must complete the poem that they are given either with a paragraph or imagining what the final sentence of this poem should be, this will also help children feel like poets; the next step or activity is for students to create their own poem of a story or novel they are reading, to do this activities we will give them small tools: first words, typical structures of poetry, adjectives, etc.
Following to this activity we had another one where we were taught several resources to guide our students when writing a poem. One of those resources was thinking of a general word or topic, such a room and think about things that might be there, feelings, etc .; and the next step was to think the opponents of this words, for example a room may not have a car inside it. Next was to contrast these ideas, for example:
“I feel happy in my blue room when it’s daytime
I am afraid of the monsters in my blue room night”
Here I leave the link of this great resource:
“Riddle interactive” http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/riddle/
Also this rap Michael Rosen although it is (the contrast) only the first few seconds.
“Michael Rosen Rap” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCkM-IJew3Q
Finally, and speaking of rap, I love the idea of this teacher. Students often quickly blanked when the teachers say the word “poetry”, curious right? Maybe because the most common method that teachers use to show this type genre is not the best. In this video you can find a new motivation for our students, many of us love music but in particular there is a genre that uses quite rhyme … rap, and I think it can be a great motivator, and something very close to our future students. Hope you like it!
“Rap Introduction to Poetry (Primary School Teaching – Year 6/7 Class)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lb_sdwenw

But, who is Peter Pan? Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright James Matthew Barrie.
The story is about Peter Pan (a mischievous boy who can fly and never grows up) who spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang, the Lost Boys, interacting with mermaids, Native Americans, fairies, pirates, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside (the Darling siblings).
So far all we know the story, right? But what happen if I told you that a kind of real Peter Pan lived in our world? And also that for me is it nothing less than the author himself?
James Matthew Barrie was born into a wealthy Victorian British family. When he was 6 years one of his brothers, David (almost 14 years) died (and this always remained some people to the “boy who wouldn’t grow up”).
His mother never recovered from the loss, and ignored Barrie. In “Peter and Wendy” (the real name for the story of Peter Pan), Peter told Wendy that he has parents but the day he come back they had forgotten him and replaced him with another boy (a similarity with his famous character, do not you think so?) Also this lack of feelings form his mother, will make Barrie look for a mother-son relationship in their marriage, and to add, he will also made Peter look for a maternal relationship on Wendy.
As his mother does not recover from the loss of David, that cause on Barrie a strong desire to please and try to fill the space left by his brother. This desire to be like his brother caused on Barrie to grow in age, but his height was not consistent with this; in fact, upon reaching adulthood his height was only one meter and a half, this problem which now day is associated with the desire to be a child forever (like Peter Pan) and do not grow, can bring psychological problems that are related to physical growth.
“Peter Pan” is born when Barrie came into contact with Llewelyn family, 1897-1898.

The Adventures of Peter Pan were created by Barrie in order to entertain the children and some of the adventures and antics were done by Llewellyn’s children themselves and Barrie (he felt more comfortable with them than with adults).
Besides, for Barrie the adult world and the world of children coexisted as two parallel universes, so the communication and the good things of both were impossible. Growing up for Barrie meant giving up forever the cheerful life of the child and likewise remain forever a child being equaled giving up the pleasures of adult life, especially anything related to love. Given this bleak scenario, the small Scottish whose body refused to be measured over a meter and a half, was held between the two worlds, and that will be reflected in the literary space in a physical separation between the world of the elderly and -London- the world of children-the ever- Neverland.
For all these reasons I think that Barrie feel reflected and express their feelings on “Peter Pan”. Do you think the same after ready this post?

According Beatrix Potter was growing this relationship with her parents was going to worsen because they believed that none of her family should work (as they believed a higher social status) and did not understand the desire to study of her daughter.
She was rejected because she was a woman in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew where she wanted to study even her uncle (who felt a great predilection for her) try to support her, this was the reason because she could not carry with the publishing of her study of mycology.
At the end when she wrote her books, she had difficulty finding a publisher for them. When she found him, their relationship was so close that she maintained a relationship (not recognized by their parents) with him until his death before they can marry, his name was Norman Warne.

In 1880 she received the ART AWARD in the South Kensington Museum for drawing and freehand.
Also she write a secret diary where Beatrix appeared as a shy person but in her diary she was able to express herself openly, and she was critic of the artists and politicians of those days.

Her books could be divided into two stages: From 1902 until 1920, and from 1922 to 1930. Her main works are:

• The tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
•  The tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903)
• The tailor of Squirrel Nutkin
• The tailor of Gloucester
• The tale of Benjamin Bunny
•  The tale of Mr.Jeremy Fisher
•  The tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911)
•  Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes (1922)

The main point of these books was that, these books are prepared for the use of children: they are “easy handle” (smaller), with a big letter adaptated to children and also they are catchy for the children with the use of animal as characters.
I leave some links in case you want to have more information of this great author, or also view some of her stories turned into cartoon:

Awards

http://www.peterrabbit.com/en/beatrix_potter/beatrixs_life/237_art_award

Games for children

http://www.peterrabbit.com/en/fun_and_games

Life

http://mujeresparapensar.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/beatrix-potter/

Beatrix Potter

http://elpais.com/diario/2007/02/10/viajero/1171144626_850215.html

http://derechoaleer.org/blog/2014/01/bienvenida-al-dominio-publico-beatrix-potter.html

 
Films

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOGe51k_9eU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHGpAlCt00

For all those with whom I could not speak I represented little María (bottom left) in front to a hillside with some slope, this was because when I was small (and though you may not believe) I did not like to read and I looked like a boring and impossible activity, just read a few books or comics (I love Mafalda) which are represented by my side.
But then (and as you watch the highlights) are the books “Finis Mundi” by Laura Gallego and “Molly Moon” by Georgia Byng. Both books were recommended to me, the first by my teacher in 6th grade; the second by my cousin when I was in 5th grade.

Both pleasantly surprised me since the first book approached me a story of mystery, adventure and yes … a little fantasy! (One of my favorite genres), and the second fascinated me with a story where I always imagined having the power of the main character … how I would have liked to!
The following books are the ones that made the difference. “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke  reminded me of the story of “Peter Pan” (one of my favorite stories) and took me to one of my favorite cities, Venice. The other book “Greek Mythology” was a gift from my grandfather for the “Día del Libro”. He knew that I like mythology (at that time I liked the Egyptian mythology) but he decided that since our culture has a lot of Greek influence I should  read something of that culture, and you cannot imagine how successful that was, from then on, whenever I do not have any book to read, I read these little stories which bring me to the “Old Gods”.

From this moment, as I wanted to represent with the other a little older María climbing the slope on a mechanical escalator, reading for me was much easier.
Finally, I represent “the present”; and I think you can call me “Big Bookworm” I do not mind the book, the gender (unless detectives and fear), the time in which it was written or even the size; I read everything and I feel each book is special, leave something on you (this idea is the reflection of all quotes from many books that are written on the hillside), and for that reason most of my books are represented on the shelves.
Many of you are surprised by the originality, and of course, has an explanation because for me reading is very, very important in my life (I cannot go to sleep without reading at least one chapter) It could not be represented in another way ! I am glad to hear that many of you have been inspired with this Reading Map … and I hope you do see that reading it is not so bad!

What is Storytelling? Storytelling is narrating a story in a different way (with gestures, sounds, songs, etc.) and always from a narrative point of view. It is a technique that we can use in order to help our students when we are in class telling a story that contains difficult vocabulary or contents.
I think it is an effective technique in class because we can use it to tell stories in a foreign language and children will understood it.

As it cannot be otherwise, ourselves (future teachers) checked this technique. First we saw how to it had to be done, Michael Rosen and his “Chocolate Cake” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxQLITdOOc or  “We’re going on a bear hunt”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytc0U2WAz4s were our teachers. With them we found that gesture, onomatopoeia, repetition and even rhythm are very important for students to understand a story in a foreign language. I recommend that you see these videos and that you use this resource in your classes.

Many of my classmates have commented how they felt doing these activities, as you can see in other blog entries that I recommend  you to read it. I will say that if we as adults enjoyed these activities, our kids will have great with this type of activity.

The next challenge we had to do was to create our own “Storytelling”. Most of the work was great and we laughed a lot. Also the majority work very varied primary topics as the Solar System, The Space, The Blood Components, etc.

I really enjoyed these classes because I realized how easily we can catch our student’s attention. Storytelling can be used in many different ways, but we have to take into account things such as the age, the topic or objectives we want to deal with, the level of English. As every material we use in our classes, we have to know how to use them to take an advantage of these resources.

On my opinion we can use storytelling just to have fun and relax, to improve our students’ linguistic competences, to introduce the topics we are going to work on, to learn new vocabulary or to improve their capacity of body language.

“Sal Solecito”

                                                                                                                            Sal solecito
caliéntame un poquito.
Por hoy, por mañana,
por toda la semana.

Perhaps now you will have a smile on your face and you stand remembering all the rhymes or “cancioncillas” you learned when you were a child.

Learning these rhymes may seem silly (Which use the have given except sing occasionally?) Also many of them have no a specific meaning neither a clearly text, but I can say that actually they can be a good memoristic and linguistic resource for students while having fun.

The first thing we did in this session was to work on a dictate where we learned the history of this kind of literature:

Nursery rhymes (or mother goose) were created during the 14th century. They were created to express traditions, political ideas, social critiques or historical events. They were passed by word of mouth. But, after many centuries they have lost the original meaning and have remained (has we know them) the typical innocent children songs-chants.
Nowadays, there are a lot of popular nursery rhymes created, specially, for education. We can find four types of Nursery rhymes: Lullabies, Counting & Alphabet, Riddles; and Historical rhymes events & Culture.

Then we had to try to see what could be the original meaning of various Nursery Rhymes:

And finally we prepare one class and represent in front of our peers.

But, Are they really so important for our classroom. Are they useful for our students?

After this session I can say yes with confidence. Nursery rhymes not only serve to improve the memory capacity of our students, not only to work phonetics may appear in them; it is much more.
While we work these aspects we are also working some multiple intelligences of our students such as Kinesthetic (they do body movement, with the used of gestures or movements in the representations, what makes students learn to express themselves with their body and lose the embarrassment of public speaking), Musical (all of them have a rhythm) or Linguistic (they are basically text).

In conclusion, I believe that this type of text helps students in all aspects that I mentioned before and that make them a good kind of text to work in class because working with a texts do not only mean you have to read it, you can also think about the actions that you read, represent them with your friends and also sing it!

I am María Sampedro, a 4th Year student of Primary Education (Bilingual option) studying at University Center Cardinal Cisneros.

During this first semester of academic I will be commenting on this blog as part of the subject “Exploring Children’s literature in English” lectured by Prof. Dr.Raquel Fernandez.

I am looking forward to start, hope you like my posts and thankful you comment on them!