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!

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”.

First, we took some videos of Michael Rosen, who is an English children’s novelist, as a good example of storytelling. Then we analyze curiously the characteristics that made Rosen´s stories catchy for children and even for adults. We conclude that there are plenty of things that make his stories so attractive, such as the repetition of grammatical structures and vocabulary, the mystery included in his stories, the first-person narration and all the gestures, voice intonations, noises and funny things that make the auditor feel involved by the story and its characters.

After this analysis, we thought about new innovative ideas that could improve Rosen´s story according to CLIL. Finally we thought about some useful ideas, for instance, it would be motivating to activate the children´s prior-knowledge by asking them if they like chocolate cakes, or what would they do if they were the protagonist of the story. Moreover it would be eye-catching to introduce pictures, visuals, encouraging them to repeat the body language of Rosen and pre-teaching some of the difficult vocabulary words that appear in the story.

Although we proposed some great ideas, the teacher showed us more ideas to create extra tasks for each story. The one that I really liked was called “Kung Fu Punctuation Poster” it consisted in practicing some different Kung Fu techniques in the air while reading the story, but they have to do a specific melee attack depending on the punctuation mark that they´ve just read. For example, each time that they had to stop reading due to a dot, they have to punch the air while saying “ha”.

We also saw another model of story in which for every action and noun that appear in the story the students have to imitate the gestures that the teacher does, so that it could be more attractive for the students.

 Finally, the teacher told us to create our own story using the previous one as a model, so that, every group could prepare a different story but using the same structure, we have to develop our own gestures for the different verbs, adjectives and nouns of the story and try to link it to other subjects apart from English in order to make the story educational.

 So next week I will write about how the activity resulted in class.

Michael Rosen´s chocolate cake story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxQLITdOOc

Kung Fu Punctuation Poster:

http://displays.tpet.co.uk/?resource=1264#/ViewResource/id1264

Jaime García

On one hand, we can divide the characters between the students. I think this is a very motivational method because the students can feel involve in the story, and in my opinion it achieves the whole attention of our students. However, I also think that this technique just works if the story is full of characters, because if not, just some pupils can participate. Another problem is that if we ask for volunteers, probably the shyest pupils will never participate.

On the other hand, we can choose other method to tell story. We can use the “Kong Fu” way. It consist in remarking with a Kong Fu sound and movement each punctuation mark.  In any case we can use another system sounds taking into account the preferences of our students. Nevertheless in my opinion this way is not the best, I think this is just good to focus on punctuation marks and intonation, never to work on the content of the story.

Finally, we have seen another strategy that is my favorite one. This one works including a contextualizing gesture for each significant word. I think it is brilliant to deal with CLIL, because you don’t need to be very concentrated in the text to understand the content, but in any case you can relate easily each word to the meanings. Also I think that is great because as the whole class can participate, the involvement is bigger, and with this kind of activities the shyest students have the opportunity to develop other skills.

Another interesting think that we have been investigating during the last week were the stories that involve a curricular content. I have found some interesting stories to deal with in CLIL classes. Not all of the contents that they treat are involved in the curriculum, but in any case the can be very useful.

Here I leave you the titles and the basic information, I hope you like it.

-The hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle (about butterflies´ cycle)

-Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Eric Carle and Bill Martin (about different animals and respect)

-Does a Kangaroo have a Mother, too? By Eric Carle (about animals´ habitat, feed and family)

-The rainbow snake, which is an Australian Aboriginal myth (about Australia, other cultures and myths and legends)

Thank you for readme

References:

Ioannou-Georgiou, S., & Ramírez Verdugo, M. D. (27 de 09 de 2014). Stories as a tool for teaching and learning in CLIL. Recuperado el 27 de 09 de 2014, de http://www.schools.ac.cy/klimakio/Themata/Anglika/conf_semin_workshops/Stories_ioannougeorgioudoloresramirez.pdf

Language skills: Children learn new vocabulary in an indirect way by singing the song at the same time. They acquire new structures and vocabulary which are not common or usually used in daily life.

Listening skills: Children acquire the language by listening, paying attention to what they hear.

Memory and imaginative skills: This is crucial for children to imagine what they are listening or singing, they imagine the story in their own way. As well, nursery rhymes are created always with repeated structures, which is advantageous for children to keep the story in mind.

What is more, nursery rhymes are related with multiple intelligences such as the musical (rhythm and harmonic) which involves sensitivity to rhythm, tone, timber…; and the bodily- kinaesthetic intelligence because it involves a physical action. In addition, nursery rhymes are linked with phonics, phonemes to help students by repeating and reinforcing the words which contain some tricky phonemes.

On the other hand, as we have seen in class Nursery Rhymes have a double meaning such as ‘Three Blind Mice’ or ‘Mary, Mary, Quite contrary’ published in 1744. This last has a religious and historical meaning furthermore than lyrics. The known british nursery rhyme ‘Georgie Porgie’ (‘Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away’), actually seems to mean ‘a torrid gay sex scandal which involves King Charles I’.

So with all of this I claim to say that nursery rhymes are perfect and fascinating for children to learn. But what catch my attention is that they are a good resource to learn the history of a country, or to observe the perspective towards the monarchy, society, power on those times.

Nursery rhymes are fun, so why not to start by singing them? Ending a class, or just using them for learning during a class can be so funny, children love moving, dancing, and singing, so why not to take advantage for this?

I am going to leave you some of my favourite Nursery Rhymes:

The wheels on the bus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFrN1FL6tE

Pat-a-cake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGxMzHZ9eKw

Thank you for standing by,

References:

http://www.bidorbuy.co.za/article/5978/Advantages_of_Nursery_Rhymes_to_Little_Children

I’m sure many of you have seen this video in Facebook or in other social media and maybe you liked and you agree with it. It talks about the artists, any kind of artist and what they do. And you might say, “What does it with the subject about? It’s about literature. It talks about “El Quijote” and all of those novels that we read when we are older. But at the beginning, and barely read, we are introduced into literature through tales and little stories by adults who read to us.

As it says, we would not be the same without any of those creations that now we consider indispensable classics. And some of those classics are tales, fables and books that we have read or studied. Since we were little, our parents read tales to us before go to sleep; or in the kindergarten the teacher told us a story to teach us many things; and without those little steps we were nothing nowadays. Because…How would we be without Gloria Fuertes and her riddles and poems; without Charles Perrault or Hans Christian Andersen; without having read Hansel and Gretel, The King Midas, The three little pigs, The ant and the grasshopper, The ugly duckling, The pied piper of Hamelin, Puss in boots, Peter and the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, The Emperor’s new clothes, The steadfast tin soldier, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Bluebeard, Juan Sinmiedo, The goose that laid the golden eggs, The little match-seller, and without all the things that the stories taught to us even when we weren’t  aware of it?

Personally, I always liked to read and that’s because of my father, who read to me since I was little before go to sleep. He read to me all the entire library until in the school they taught me to read and then I could choose and pick the books following my likes and preferences. I read before go to sleep, during the long ways by car and even when I didn’t know what to do. There are many people like me. Because I’m sure, all of us have our favorite tale or story; or that book that when we finish it and we close it we say “Wow!”. Because of that literature is so much important for personal development and to develop many competences like the imagination, the vocabulary, the writing comprehension or writing texts.

For literature there always has to be some “muerto de hambre” to write for us to enjoy, and for that, thank you.

Fortunatelly, things have changed since I started learning English two decades ago, and after doing some research about Synthetic Phonics, I came across a website that caught my attention. It is called ‘Teach Your Monster to Read‘, and it is intended for native speakers of English aged 4 and above. In this case, and even though there could be some pupils who were not able to understand all that is being said during the game, it is quite intuitive, so  I consider that it could be used with Spanish speakers from the First and Second Cycle of Primary.

The first thing that pupils will find about this game is that they have to design their own avatar, whose physical features are highly personalisable, with the possibility of adding new complements along the game.  This could help children feel motivated and forget that they ‘have to learn’, and just learn while having a good time. Moreover, each stage adds a new type of game, so the children can choose among a variety of mini-games that makes it more interesting as the level goals are achieved.

Whenever a new sound is introduced, the game provides a word beginning with that sound, but instead of doing it in the written form, which could be difficult for early readers, it is done using an easily-recognisable picture like the one below (‘r’- like in ‘rain’).

In my opinion, it is a simple but effective way of learning English phonics. Based on Synthetic Phonics, phonemes are presented following the frequency rate that is typical of these methods, but there is no feeling of repetitiveness, and when more than one phoneme is presented at a time, they form a real word, there are not just random groupings of letters.

Another positive aspect about this proposal is that, whereas there is a version that can be downloaded at a price for tablets, it is free of charge for PC and laptops. Not having to spend extra money so the pupils can use it using the computer lab or at home, is great.

And it was a great surprise for me when Raquel (our teacher) decided to show us some examples of a good storytelling.

We saw a video of an English storyteller named Michael Rosen about a chocolate cake, it was one of the most exciting stories I ever heard but not because of the story, which is interesting, but because of the way of speaking and representing of the author, he makes the story really funny and interesting, he creates the story in a way in which he is the main character and represent it in a really exaggerated way with a lot of gestures, mimic, screaming and noises in the story.

It surprised me to the point that I decidedto look for more stories and I found more stories about a watch, washing up and others shorter ones.

The topic was really interesting so I decided that I should show the story to some of my friends that has not a good level of English and check if they understood the story, and as I thought they got the whole idea of what is Michael Rosen talking about, not because of the words (they understood some of them) but because of the whole context of the video.

The class after that we returned to some videos of this brilliant novelist, but this time we were not only listening, but we were telling the story with the author, the first time we just listened to the story and the second one we represented the whole story with the help of the video at the same time. It was great, firstly I felt a little bit embarrassed but then I realized this is something really fantastic to learn because, in some way or another, all of us will work with children, and sometimes we will tell them some stories, I would like my stories would be as interesting as Michael Rosen’s ones.

Chocolate Cake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeS6U_OcE4

Michael Rosen’s website: http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/

Hi everyone! Welcome again!

Today I would like to devote this entry to talk about a topic which I consider is quite interesting, “Subversive messages hidden under infant literature”. It came up a few days ago, in our lesson focused on Nursery rhymes. The lesson was divided into three stages. The first one was a kind of introductory stage. Raquel made us builders of our own knowledge using different techniques to discover what Nursery Rhymes are, its origin and which elements characterise it. Some of those techniques were: analysing typical nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, and carrying out a “dictogloss”. Throughout the last stage we had so much fun dramatizing different types of choral reading with Nursery rhymes as the “Solo lines” (one by one).

Dramatizing “Little Jack Horner”

Although during the introductory stage, we dealt with the topic a little bit (Nursery rhymes were originally created to hide political subversive messages), it was at the 2^nd stage when we could be fully aware of what hidden subversive messages meant, through real examples. In other words, real Nursery Rhymes and the concrete hidden message that was under each of them.  One example of it was the Nursery Rhyme named “Mary, Mary, quite contrary”. Its main character, although children don’t know it and most of us either, is the daughter of Henry the 8th, and some of the objects which appear refer to instruments of torture.

Nursery Rhymes and the concrete hidden message that was under each of them.

It piques my curiosity, so I decided to investigate which was the situation of the topic nowadays. Understanding subversive books as those which awaken our rebel side, something that surprises me, was the number of authors that are in favour of these kinds of infant literary books.

A staunch supporter of them, and detractor of those which she considers “contain what adults have decided [children] have to know” (1998) is Alison Lurie. Her opinion is faithfully reflected in the title of her work Don’t tell the grown-ups. According to the writer Lucy Fuchs (1984), the appeal of these works lies in the fact that “they discuss problems that are foremost in many children’s minds and that they often feel they cannot discuss with their parents”. There are also Spanish writers who support this kind of books, as the Mexican Jaime Alfonso Sandoval. He argues that subversive books are necessary due to the fact that they “allow children in a way to expose their thoughts or fears in a symbolic way” as well as to know “the real world they will have to face” (Sandoval cited by Wences, 2008).

What do you think about it? If you don’t know it, I think it would be appropriate to devote a little bit of time to reflect on it, due to the fact that as teachers we will be one of the most influential person in our pupil’s literary life.

Some of the titles that the previously mentioned authors present as “subversives”

Lurie, A. (1998). Don’t tell the grown-ups: the subversive power of children’s literature. Little, Brown.

Fuchs, L. (1984). The Hidden Messages in Children’s Books.

Wences, M. (2008, 15 June). Los libros infantiles deben ser subversivos, asegura Jaime Alfonso Sandoval. La Jornada Guerrero. Recovered from: http://www.lajornadaguerrero.com.mx/2008/06/15/index.php?section=cultura&article=013n2cul

• Our personal point of view

One of the first points of the topic The discovery of Children´s literature was the definition of literacy. To work on it, the teacher encouraged us to try to think about that meaningful term individually.  Then, in small groups, we had to put in common our ideas and later we shared all the definitions as a whole group. As a final result, we all realized about literacy was more than developing writing and reading skills.

• Subject’s definition of literacy

Once in that point, the teacher proposed us a really complete and detailed definition of literacy, which gathered all that academic and educational abilities that characterize it, such as  reading and writing in an appropriate way or communicating with others with a share code.  We also learnt about its dimensions: phonics (sounds and spelling), grammatical knowledge, word recognition and graphic knowledge, knowledge of the context and critical thinking.

• Going further

After that lesson, my perception about this concept changed totally. At the moment, I have a wider understanding about the learning of reading and writing. It is not just the base of learning that allows the study of other subjects. The development of that skills enables the human being grow, its lifelong learning and its independence and participation with the people. Besides, it does not just benefits to individuals, it also contributes to the improvement of societies and countries. Especially, it is able to expand the  social, cultural and economic dimensions of a nation and consequently it  facilitates its globalization and connection with the whole world.

Taking into account all of these ideas, we must be aware of the great magnitude that literacy has for the education of children. In that sense, it is also necessary to appreciate the relevant role that we can carry out as future teachers of primary education.

An organism that deals with this topic in detailed is UNESCO, who studies literacy as a  crucial component for the human being development and describes it as a fundamental human right. If you feel engage with this topic, I recommend you to visit UNESCO official website where you can have access to the definition of literacy that they propose and also to some extra documents related to programs that try to  guarantee the literacy acquisition in childhood.

I hope you feel engaged with this topic and I invite you to comment on this post to share new ideas.