First of all, I want to start with a question: do you think that it is possible be a good poetry performance? Well, in my case, I have been thinking about it during this week and of course it is possible but it is not easy. When we were in class last week, I saw one video that made me think a lot. In the video we could see some tips to follow and could be a good poetry performance. The tips were:

• Score your poem: This means that we have to think carefully with which poem we want to work in order to highlight the words that we want to emphasize and think everything that should be related with the word, for example the gestures. If we chose easy poems will be easier for us and it doesn’t mean that it will be a bad task.

• Find you pace: It is also important think about in which poem are we going to work and decide the pauses that are better for us, because not always a line break gives you the pause. So we have to practice it many times to know which way is the best one to carry on.

• Good diction: This part it is related with the pronunciation, because as we know a good pronunciation it is very important, especially if we are working with children and in a different language. A good tip to achieve this point is avoided gobbling.

• Natural movements: If we want to performance a poem in a correct way, we should be careful with the movements that we made, because sometimes we tend to exaggerate them and it doesn’t fit. The best way is keep it simple and keep it natural.

• Natural and have fun: The last tip was that when we have all the previous steps, we just have to have fun during the performance because it is the best way to do it well.

So, what do you think after reading all the tips? Do you think that it is possible? Well, after see the video and do some activities, we worked with a poem, we performance it and I have to say that it is not as simple as it seem.

I was looking for the link with the video but I couldn’t find it, so you can start seeing the 5 tips video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cca7SRzsbBw and if I find the video that we made I will share it with you.

Enjoy it!

What do you think? Is it possible? Well, after the last seminar, I was thinking about that stories are something that most children use to enjoy and have fun with them, so I thought that may be it will be a good resource for us as futures teachers to use and make easier to explain some contents, or just to don’t make classes so boring.

We can use the stories as we want, for example we can change or modify one part to explain what we want, but it is not always necessary because we also can use the original story. Let’s use a simple one as Little Red Riding Hood and have a look to the first part of the story:

“Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.

One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, “Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter.”

Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.

As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up”

If we pay attention, we can see that we could teach some contents using the story, for example, little red riding hood lived in a village, so we can start teaching the different locations or the types of forest that there are and the reasons of why she lived there.  Secondly we can see that she only lived with her mother, so it could be a good idea to use this situation in order  to explain the variety of families that there could be. Also we can talk about the wolf and the mammals, their diet and their way of living.

These are only some examples, but of course there are plenty of them, so, if you think that it is useful…let’s start using stories!

A Jazz Chanting is a way of learning to speak and understand with special attention to the sound system of the language. Looking for some information about Jazz Chanting I found something that really surprise me and it is that this technique has survived all of the methodological twists and turns in our profession in the past thirty years. That is because of the different possibilities that offer the technique.

I enjoy a lot this class because for me it was a great resource that as teachers we can use whenever we want and it could be very useful to teach very different kind of concepts. If we take into account the Multiple Intelligences, we can associate both concepts because if we have a student that are music smart,  we can create a Jazz Chant for them just to make easier learn the concepts.

During the week I was thinking that it was a great technique and it remind me that when I was a child it help me a lot study with music, I used to mix the rhythm of a song that I like and instead of sing it with the lyric I used to sing it with the part of the topic that I had to study. So maybe if my teacher used with me that technique it would be easier for me study some kind of things.

They can create their own Chants because it is quite easy. May be if they are so little they are going to need some scaffold but in my opinion if they are able to create them, later it will be easier of them to remember. When we did our own Jazz Chant we did it in just few minutes and we could check that some of them were really good and that we also can include lot of contents.

I was looking if here in Spain Jazz Chants are common but I could not find any school that are used to work with it, so if you find any share it!

My first post it is about reading when we were kids. May be, nowadays most of you don’t remember or don’t have lot of memories related with reading when you were little, but I am sure that if you start thinking about it at list you will have one memory.

For some of you, reading would be one of the funniest or more interesting things in your lives just because you had the opportunity to read good books or may be because someone made it amusing for you. But I am sure that for others reading was not such an entertaining thing…

During my live I had the opportunity to see different cases of children that really hate reading; the first one was my own case. When I started to read it was funny for me, but little by little I saw that everyone improved their reading skills and I still had problems with the comprehension or with the fluency. My teachers were always telling me that I didn’t know how to read and that I had never pay attention so that’s why I started to feel frustrated and there were a couple of years that for me, reading was like a nightmare until my aunt bought me the book of “The little prince” and she started to read with me.

Now, in the university when I was doing my practicum in the schools I also have seen children with reading problems but the difference it is that nowadays teachers are aware of that kind of problems and they pay more attention to them trying to avoid that feeling of inferiority.

I decided to write about it because the other day we were thinking about our reading memories and I could feel again that even now, I sometimes think that I hate reading because I don’t do it well, but after the class I thought about so many questions like: What would happen if someone helped me before? What would happen if I didn’t have that teacher? If my aunt didn’t help me, I still have reading problems?

Anyway as future teacher we should pay attention to the reading process of our future pupils and of course their difficulties and problems because not all of them are going to learn as fast as we want.

Try to make them feel like an important part of the book!