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.

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

During the previous weeks the class has been working on a specific feature related to Aladdin’s film. We had to create a workshop for 9 years old students from Daoiz y Velarde School (Alcalá de Henares). Our group chose the Cave of Wonders scene when Aladdin enters to the cave of wonders and he finds all wonders such as gold, the magical carpet… everything students had ever seen before. For this, we wanted to decorate the class as it was a cave covering all the chairs and tables with continuos paper, carpets and cushions were placed on the floor where the students could be seated, also we put tables full of chocolate coins, everything with the purpose of creating an Arabian ambience.

In addition to the decoration, the group disguised itself of the different characters from the film: Aladdin, Jasmine, Jafar, Genie, Rajah, and Abu. The children were spell bounded when they saw us and immediately they recognised which character we were. So with that, let’s start talking about the procedure!

To begin with the workshop, Aladdin was outside the classroom (Cave of Wonders) pretending to be meditating while children were getting closer with Abu who was asking: ‘Do you know who is this character?’. So Aladdin asked them to enter to the CAVE OF WONDERS. Once inside, students bumped into the Genie character who carried out the ‘wishes activity’. In which consisted the ‘wish activity’?. The Genie was calling student by student so that students told their own wish: ‘I wish…’ ‘I wish to be a…’. Once the Genie had all the wishes he kept them. After, we did the following activity using the interactive whiteboard and the program ‘Netbook’. It consisted in giving some messy sentences and children had to be placing them. After this, we played the trailer of Aladdin to remember the film, scenes, landscapes, characters… Later, we played the game ‘Who am I?. The activity consisted in being placed by pairs, the teachers put a drawing-flashcard of the character on the forehead of the student. They couldn’t see their own character so that they had to guess it. You can see it here:

They had to ask: ‘Have I a long hair?’, ‘Am I a man?’, ‘Have I feathers?. The other pair had to answer yes/no. We thought that scaffolding here could be provided, so we made some lists of adjectives, objects and parts of the body related to the characters in order to help students to have more flexibility and fluency to talk and describe the character, as you can see here:

Once they could guess their character, we passed into the last activity.

The aim of the last activity ‘Cartoonist‘ was to create the character children wanted. For example, to build the body of Aladdin he had divided the character into the parts of the body (head, arms, legs…). Like this:

Children had to join all the parts in order to create the new character. By the way, there were helped by this sheet that they had to follow:

On the head there was an empty face where students could put behind the poster’s character and take a photo, pretending the student was this character. And finally, we gave them medals, chocolate coins… and so on with the next three groups!

I hope ýou enjoyed the workshop!

We were divided into six groups around the corridors of the principal building. Each group was decorated in a different scenario of Aladdin’s movie. Like the market, the Cave of Wonders, the dessert, the palace… if you were walking 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.

When the children came to my group scenario, called “The Secrets of Arabia”, they had to stay in front of the classroom door, touch the magic lamp and wait until the Genie comes and he give them 3 wishes. The Genie gave them money to buy things in Arabia, a way of transport, which is the flying carpet, and a turban to start the tour.

The first thing they could see was the market where Aladdin and his monkey Abu were waiting for them to teach them how to buy. Pupils could buy typical jewelry, fruit (apples, dates, and bananas), bread, tea or vessels. After the market, kids went to the palace were Jaffar was waiting for them. He taught them Arabian rules from the film trough activities and poetry. One rule was “Don’t steal or they will cut your hands” and another one was “The princess only has to marry a prince”. Then, they went to the palace garden where the princess Jasmine was dancing. She played some Arabic music and taught students how to do it following the instructions of a video. Children liked it and both, girls and boys, enjoyed this corner and danced together. The Genie was with the pupils during the whole tour helping them if they had any problem to speak English or if they didn’t understand something. Every time that the students finished a corner and they had to change to other one, the characters of those corners joined them to the next one, so at the end we were all together dancing and having fun. Finally, we gave them a bracelet as a little present from Arabia to make them remember this day and how great it was.

Personally, I liked very much the workshop and doing the performance with children instead of do it with our classmates but I also have to say that it was very exhausted but it was worth it.

Welcome again. For this post I am going to talk about the last medium gorup class in which we were working with “Special poems”. First of all, I want to say that this activity was very useful for me thinking in the future, and I am sure that i will use it.

It was Monday, the first hour and usually everybody use to be tired. But, this class was different. First we have to choose one video and make an activity with a Bidi Code for the rest of the people of the University. This part was really funny because we can see the videos that our partners did the last day. It was very curious how with a same poem or rhyme each group decide to do in a different way. That is the power of the mind and the imagination. The second part, it was the part that I liked a lot and I will use in the future with my students. Why? Because in my opinion, poems are a forgotten part of literature. Maybe children relate poems with some books that they have to read compulsory or some definitions related with poetry such as: rhyme, meter, etc…

But, why not change this way to work with poems? Why not use other types of resources to motivate students and make more catchier for them? For to do this, I consider very useful work with poems in a special way, poems with different shapes depending on its topic. It could be a great idea because not only work with poems but also with the developing of the creativity, creativity that in many cases teachers forgot with their students and I consider one of the most important part in each student. With this kind of poems, in Spanish called “caligramas”, children can feel more motivated because they can create their own poems. Related with this and with our future students, it could be great to make a competition of Poems with shapes in which all students can be participate individually or maybe as a group to encourage the team work. This kind of activities that we have been doing during this term, are some examples of things that we can do to change the teaching style which we want to criticise when we are students and we forgot it when we are teachers.

Rememeber, your imagination and your creativity not have to have limits. You always have to develop the creativity and the enthusiasm in all the classes you are.

Today I want to talk about today’s half group class. During the first hour, we have been working with the poetry videos our classmates did. We have been creating activities we could do with those videos. After that, we generated a GQ code with the video and the activity related to it, because we are going to challenge the rest of the students of other classes to do it. I really think this is a very good idea because I like doing things that are going to be useful or put it into practice, in this case with our college mates. Another thing I like about this activity is that we are going to have the chance to check if our mates did the activity, because we put a couple of hashtags which are #Soy CUCC and #helpingAnnieOnlight to see their answers. This activity is going to be carried out next week, I’m so eager to see what happens.

Related to using the GQ code to do these kinds of activities I realized that we have found it a bit difficult to create. In fact it is something really simple and easy, but we are not used to do it, and this make me think that we as teacher have to be always alert of new things and in this case, new technologies, because this world is continuing progressing and we can’t be stuck in what we learnt. Children and children’s necessities changes through time and we have to adapt ourselves and our way of giving classes to the time in which we are living.

The second part of the class, consisted on created our own poems following a technique or a kind of poem. In my case it was the “shape poem”. We decided to do a beach and all the things related to it like sand, sun, fishes, ball… In my opinion this is a really good method to make students feel more attracted to poetry due to that is more catchy and visual, for that reason students can feel more motivated to read and produce poetry, something I consider very positive.

That is all for today! have a great week

The real name of this kind of books are “choose-your-own-adventure” and it was published between 1979 and 1998 by Bantam Books (now is part of Random House publisher house) selling more than 250 million of books in these 19 years.

The first (and the only one) book I had of that type I can read it around 10 times because each time I open it, I was sure that I would find a new story to read depending on what decisions I took in each page.

If you don’t know the kind of books I was speaking, I explain you: those books starts in the first page (as all the books) telling you the first sentences of a story, you have to read it until the book said to you that you have to choose between two options to follow the story: one option goes to one page, and the other option starts in another different one. So, at that moment, you have to choose the next step of the story. And that happens more times in the book, so you can choose the story you are going to read.

I have to confess that I really like those stories because you have to create the story without creating the characters or the environments, because the book gives it to you.

Those books are a good way to mix two different “worlds”: the literature and the “architecture”, because you have to create your own story based on something that someone has written, so it can be lots of stories inside one single book, so that’s amazing!

I will also recommend it to those children that, as me, didn’t like to read, because it seems as a normal book but it makes you think in order to decide which path will take the main character or to which place you want to go and why. The books are focused to readers between 12 and 16 years, but there are also specific books for children below 10.

To end up the post, I give you here a link to the Wikipedia article about those books where you can find the different books of that collection:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Choose_Your_Own_Adventure_books

This week, my middle group had a great Poetry Workshop, and one of the activities that Raquel proposed us, had to do with the creation of Shape Poetry. In this case, we had to find inspiration using a model that she provided, and there where up to six different types of shape poetry for us to explore.

But, what is shape poetry? in Spanish we know it as caligrama, and according to Wikipedia, it is

A poem, phrase, or word […] arranged in a way that creates a visual image. The image created by the words expresses visually what the word, or words, say. In a poem, it manifests visually the theme presented by the text of the poem.

In my opinion, it is a great resource to present poetry to our pupils in a different way to the ‘create two verses that rhyme’. It is very visual, catchy and interesting. In this case, the poem can be enjoyed not only by listening to, or reading the words, but also by understanding the message that the picture is provoking.

It could be said that the words layout provide a visual clue to understand the poem. Moreover, it can engage those students whose visual-spatial intelligence is more developed than their linguistic intelligence, as they can create poems using few words.

Here you can find some examples taken from the blog “El baúl de las palabras”, created by a literature teacher from IES Federico García Lorca, in La Puebla de Cazalla (Sevilla). They are the proof that, with the proper guidance, pupils or young students can create beautiful poetry.

Furthermore, there are some artists who are able to create amazing designs, such as those by Joni James, in which she uses the names of the parts of the object she is ‘drawing’ to recreate it, as you can see on the bicycle, or words related to the topic, as in the guitar and the heart.

The next question is, can it be used in the classroom with Primary Education pupils? I would say yes. Although the examples above are more elaborated, there are simpler ideas (like the ones we created in class), that can help us teachers, to introduce poetry in the classroom in a really enjoyable and catchy way.

I hope you like the post. I encourage you to explore the topic, and also to have a look at Joni James’ gallery, where you will find authentic works/words or art.

Have a nice week!

Sources:

Blog “El Baúl de las palabras”. IES Federico García Lorca (La Puebla de Cazalla, Sevilla) http://lorcaelbauldelaspalabras.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/caligramas-en-ingles.html

Joni James Calligrams https://www.etsy.com/es/people/jonijames

Wikipedia (Definition of Calligram) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligram

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!

In this post I want to talk about the last seminar, trying not to reveal a lot of information because there are some mates that hadn’t the seminar yet. We were working on theatre, and as we were children, we were reading in groups some parts of different levels, starting by the easier and ending with some more difficult ones. Once again we have learnt a value lesson; we have discovered that we can teach what we want using something unusual like the theatre. In this case the ecosystem of some animals.

Using scripts with children have a lot of benefits like:

• Developing the verbal expression, letting them express themselves more fluency
• Improving their corporal expression letting them being imaginative and work with their body
• Improving their creativity and imagination, because we can let them that they create their own scripts.
• Work in groups

They can make different activities with scripts like reading it all together, by dialogs and using gestures and mimic. It will be more motivating and catchy for them and as Luis Montiel, a teacher of a school said (sorry for using Spanish):

“El teatro para los niños es un complemento necesario para su formación ya que les ayuda a descubrir muchas habilidades que no saben que tienen o a veces lo saben pero les da miedo demostrarlas. Esta actividad les aporta seguridad y motivación personal”.

“La confianza que los niños van adquiriendo es lo primordial para mí, no me interesa solo que hagan una obra al final de curso, valoro que se formen como personas, que poco a poco sean capaces de valorarse a sí mismos, que pierdan el miedo a lo que digan los demás”.

What do you thing about using theatre and scripts in the schools? It is necessary or is only an entertainment? Could be a complement?

I remember when I was a child and in my school I had a teacher who was really involve on a project that she created that was related with her subject: music. But also with history, dancing and theatre! We worked during all year and at the end of the curse we went to the Paco de Lucia’s auditorium and show to the rest what we were working on! We were dressed up and acted. Maybe it is no necessary that, but I’m sure that working with scripts and theatre we can achieve great things. These years with this teacher were ones of the best of my school because we were motivated all the year and we wanted to impress the rest of the school and parents that could come with use.