First of all we created new characters, creatures that are related to us and have some of our characteristics, or maybe not, maybe it’s our antagonist but all of them have something special that have been created starting from our imagination and they have a little bit of magic on them. After creating this magic, malicious, benevolent, hero we have mixed it with all the characters created by our mates; then we made groups of 5 – 6 people and then we picked again other characters different to the ones that we have created, so we have new ones.

Later on we will have to create and develop a story with those characters to create a poster for our new movie and then sell it to someone who will be interested on bringing our story to the big screen. We will see the results this week…

As a result of this activity, I was thinking on different ways to translate this to our future classrooms

and which has first come to my mind is “the traveller book” I’m sure most of you know what is this but for the ones who don’t know it… Is a book in which the students create their own story we can begin it in white or we can give them the beginning of the story, after that one of our pupils is going to take the book to its house to continue the story with the help of his parents. The main aim is that the students create a new page for the common story but taking into account what was written first to give the story the sense it has to have.

This could be another way to make our students create their own story and being creative and motivate moreover the attendant of the book could read the new part of the story on Mondays and the rest of the class could draw a picture based on its mates part of the story and then select one of the pictures from all and paste it in the book to make it funnier.

Could you imagine other activities like this to create collaborative and cooperative stories or books? I would be pleased of reading your comments and thanks for your attention.

Last year I made one for my little cousin it was handmade, I think it was a very good present for him because he could always read his story and he will enjoy it because I make it using different textures and now that he is a little bit older he can touch it and see it as many times he want. In my opinion this kind of books are a very good resource because the child feel involve in the story and he pays more attention to it because he is the one who is living the adventures or that he is involved in the weft we could let him some blank pages to continue it by himself and make their imagination and creativity work.

In relation to this types of books other kind are the ones with pops ups like this one:
They were fantastic because as the same time that you were reading you could see what was happening in a 3D dimension and there were other books in which there were secrets and you have to find them and you could play with the pop ups it was so funny.

There are plenty of books of this kind but the best ones are the ones we made telling our own stories I tend to think that because you can invent your own story including your own drawings and that gives the book a lot of personality. There isn´t a perfect formula to write a book we just have to let our imagination fly, start writing words and scrawls to make the first ideas come out and then put them into an order then things everything will fall into its place.

Personally, I feel strongly that we should encourage our students to write books, poems and little stories to make their imagination blow, and be more creative besides there are going to became richer, because they will learn more vocabulary and they will express themselves better.

Finally I would like to talk about interactive books, this type of books are popular know because it’s been more common to have tablets and electronic devices at home for the use of the smallest of the house and are a very good resource to read them stories but we have to read stories as well to variety of books that children read.

I will like to know your opinion about this, and if you have ever had the chance to have a personalized book. Thanks for ridding and I hope you like it.

Is the first time that we have the chance to work with pupils in the university, we sometimes see other groups of mates working with pupils and I have to say that I felt a little bit jealous but now we are the ones that have this challenge.

In class we were deciding which film we were going to deal with and we have had very good options as “The lord of the rings”, “The book of the jungle”, “Mary Poppins”, “Aladdin” and others. So we have to vote the ones that we liked the most and the thing was so equal between “the book of the jungle” and “Aladdin” however “Aladdin” wins. At first sight was a little bit difficult to find the didactic porpoise of this film but as the time goes by every group was thinking on the different things we could teach with this incredible film. After that we presented our topics to the rest of the mates and they told as some advices about where to place the different groups and also other topics that we can relate with the one we have chosen.

Moreover I didn´t remember the film very well so that day in the afternoon I was watching the film to see all the scenes and how funny the Gini was, the next day in my group we were all singing the songs that are displayed in the film, how anybody can remember the songs that well, but my mates did it; now I´m all the time singing it.

I would never imagine doing this at the university, but in my opinion is a very good way to practice for our future jobs, and also for being more prepared and being more involved in the task. I´m so enthusiastic, I count the days to do it and to see all of as dress up like all the characters in the film and also how you we all decorate the university. I hope you are also enjoying with this task. I would like to know what do you think about it and how do you feel?

Do you think we could adapt Disney films to explain science and other subjects to our students?

Most of the presented authors work not only in telling stories the also produce they books and draw them and they created  very good books, most of the books where attractive for the children because the story was closer to the children, and others have a moral inside, which could help readers to solve problems and learnt from them. This is the reason why some of these books are so famous and so well sold. Also we don’t have to forget that the drawings are so important because if the book has good drawings and it is related with the story it’s going to be easier for the children to read the book.

I didn’t know most of the authors but some others I recognised because of its famous books as Roald Dhal wit Matilda and Charlie and the chocolate factory, and other authors of whom I see the films based on their books as E. B. White with Stuart little, or even the series as in the case of Marc Brown with Arthur, and many others. Knowing which were the motivations of the authors to write those incredible stories was interesting besides.

I decided to talked about this because in a no longer future we will have the task of encourage our children to read and it’s not going to be easier decide which book is going to be better for them and which on is going to be more interested for them so probably we will wake up something inside us that inspire us to create a book for our students, who knows…

Here I let you a website in which you could find different tools to create books for our future students or even to make them create their own stories, moreover it is also explained what every tool it’s for.

• http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Writing+Tools

This other website is a blog in which its author shows 5 website that create books with video, that’s seems fantastic to create personalized books.

• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/08/5-free-tools-for-creating-video-book.html#.VEqJwiKsWSp

This type of website are a good resource to create books and help our students develop their imagination and their creativity, I hope you like this post and you find it useful. I want to know your opinion. Thanks for reading.

This week in class we have had the seminar in which we have been talking about our experiences with storytelling and books, that we have read when we were little, so this has inspired me to tell you a little bit of my story and how books came to my life…; well I was not so young when I started to love reading books, I have been always a little bit lazy, so I could say that when I was little I didn’t felt so much comfortable with opening a book and started to read or just see the pictures as other child used to do.

I started to love reading when I was in fourth year of High School, the reason why I started reading more since that year was that I didn’t have any other form to scape, and the books that I read normally where the one that where mandatory to read in class; so I found a book in which the protagonist has the same problems as me. He hates mathematics, so one night he started dreaming with a devil who explains that mathematics isn’t so horrible, so I felt so close to that boy, that I continue reading. I think that I read that book at least seven times. When I felt a little bit worried about something I run to read some of this book called “The number devil”.

Another type of books that I read when I was little where comics, such as “Asterix and Obelix” ones, I always thought that this kind of books where easy to read because they have pictures instead of being plenty of words and that is what likes most of them. Another book that surprises me a lot was “Charlie and the chocolate factory”, I read it at school also and I love it, it was so creative.

After all this kind of books I started to read fantasy books, the ones in which you have to imagine all the world and all the things that the writer has describe, in this way I could imagine the story how I liked, and it was amazing, so I still reading that type because is the one I like the most.

Finally I would like to conclude saying that reading is not a thing that you must do, because is compulsory, is a thing that you should do because you like it, because you enjoy and you have fun doing it. “You know that you love reading when you find a book with the one you can’t stop reading until you finish it, you devour it”.