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.

As we all know, it is quite important that our students since the early ages acquire the reading habits. Anciently, the way to tell stories were oral. Oral is crucial in children’s literature.

One important thing is that a good reader is who starts being before to start reading, with the stories of his dad or his mum which stimulate his imagination and curiosity for the story. For this reason is very important child feels closeness and involve in the story not only listening the story but with the participation of the narrator who is one of the most import part.

Last week I asked my mother about my reading experiences and she made me remember a lot of things that I can not remember well. When I was a child, I enjoyed a lot listening to my mother tell me a story slowly and carefully. She tried to make the effort telling me stories when she had time and I have to recognise it because she had not much time. When she told me stories, she used all of her love, using intonations, breaks and also she stopped when some word was new for me and she told me the meaning using examples and then she continued. Those moments were the best for me. I think that the more time parents spend to reading more they will like it. Only if parents get pleasure in their children during telling stories, children will reach understanding and learning.

Why is the role of parents so important?

Because children are imitators of their parents and they admire all the things they do. To accompany and facilitate the reading since the early ages at home is crucial to create good readers. It is necessary to create permanent bonds and feelings. On one hand reading is a leisure activity but on the other hand is also a very important resource for the learning and to acquire more culture.

Motivate children to read must be a continuous and daily activity.

The infancy is the beginning of that race without end, but do you think all parents try to encourage the reader habits on their children? As teachers, what things do you think we can do to improve the love of reading in class?

To finish with, I write a link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVk6jv4hjG4) in which talks about the importance that I have been talking in this post. Also related with the role of families, I show you a website that I have considered interesting (http://i-elanor.typepad.com/casadelarbol/actividades-para-fomentar.html).

Thanks for your attention. See you in the next post! I wait for your inquietudes, doubts, answers or experiences when you were a child.

]]> http://blogs.cardenalcisneros.es/childrenslit/2014/10/13/the-power-of-the-family-the-relevance-in-reading/feed/ 1 http://blogs.cardenalcisneros.es/childrenslit/2014/10/12/the-importance-of-cooperative-learning-and-david-shannon/ http://blogs.cardenalcisneros.es/childrenslit/2014/10/12/the-importance-of-cooperative-learning-and-david-shannon/#comments Sun, 12 Oct 2014 21:55:10 +0000 http://blogs.cardenalcisneros.es/childrenslit/?p=381 Hi everybody and welcome to my second post!

During this post I would like to tell you about an activity we did this week about some of the most manful authors in the area of the children’s literature. In this activity we made groups of three people approximately and each group had an author allocated. The whole activity consists in getting information about our author and after that presenting it in front of the rest of our mates. Honestly I have to say that I really love this kind of activities in which there is a cooperative learning involved, that is because in one part the group which is presenting is teaching and that’s a great training, and on the other hand we have the other group which is going to be not only learning but also watching their peers and getting ideas about ways of teaching and also things to improve and good points.

So the author allocated to my group was David Shannon, who is not only an author but also an illustrator, in my opinion the most incredible thing about David Shannon is the fact that he wrote his first book at the age of 5, it is called “No David!” and it is composed mostly by illustrations, the book narrates the story of a child which is scolded during the whole story with the words “No David”. An incredible fact is that the most important awards in David Shannon’s life are because of that book and the first one he wrote. The School Library Journal called the book as the Best Book of the Year, and it was on the New York Times on the Best Illustrated Book list.

I consider it is a really great author, and even more in the first steps of the children with the literature, taking into account that David Shannon’s books are based in illustration and there isn’t too much text in them, which will make the children easier to read it and understand it. Also a really interesting thing of our author that I would like to mention is a quote we found in which David says “I try to have fun when I’m making a book” and I consider that is one of the most important things to take into account but not only if speaking about books, also if speaking about teaching, I really believe that if we will try to have fun while teaching, our students will also have fun learning :).

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!

When we read a book, we normally know only things about the book, I mean, after reading  them we know the story with an introduction a main body and a final (that can be happy or sad), the characters, the places, the actions…but what about behind the book? Are more beyond?
Yes of course, and this is a parallel story that we usually forget and sometimes is more interesting that the real one and it can make that we understand better a book.

For example, in my case and in the case of Carolina’s group I discovered that our authors use rhymes because when they were children their mothers read or told them rhymes and poems and they kept it in mind after years and years and finally they created their own books with rhymes.
This discovery made me think about the first post that I did and how much important are our firsts steps when we start reading or writing even don’t remembering them really clear and how these things left a mark on us forever.

Some stories were really related with the life of the writers as the case of Matilda, that represent the scholar life of the author and some things that probably shock him (as the rude teacher that he had), or the group of Azu where the writer was the protagonist of the books “Arthur”, and another characters represented was his best friend and the girl that he liked when he was in the school.

But probably the thing that impresses me the most was in the group of Susana, when she told that her author wrote his first book when he was 5 …can you imagine that one of your firsts writings was award and published? Unbelievable, isn’t it?!

Well, I hope that you have enjoyed this post and I would like read here your comments about what you liked the most about other books and your impressions of the different author.

Thank you for reading!

Apart from this, the fact that Seuss was a cartoonist and an ilustrator says a lot about his creativity and capacity to represent the worlds he used to believe in when he was writing. A very complete author with morals in mind in every story he wrote as he wanted the children to understand the world they lived in. Additionally, Seuss  cared a lot about social problems, which I admire, as using stories to relay social norms, trends and even rules is easier diluted within a childrens story.

I emplore you to read some of his work especially the cat in the hat, as it was written during the great depression and it shows how to connect with a real situation through the characters in the book.

Therefore, after reading only but a handful of Dr Seuss´s work, I am now a great fan and will endeavour to continue reading his other weird and wonderful adaptations on the world that we live in.

That is why we had to work in groups of three people, in most cases with those who, for any reason, we hadn’t had the chance to do it before, and prepare a 5-minute presentation to try and convince our classmates that the author we had become experts in (or kind of), deserved to be chosen as the most relevant in Children’s Literature.

It must be said that I wasn’t aware of the exciting life that most of them had/are having, and I am truly convinced that Roald Dahl, which was the one that my group was in charge of presenting (thanks Ali and Carmen!), should be at the very top of that list. Not only was he a writer, but also a pilot and even a spy. Moreover, his strong desire to help his children, made him design a valve to solve one of his son’s medical conditions… He was a truly interesting man.

Anyway, is it enough (having an exciting life, I mean) to be considered as the best author? Probably not, but if you scratch a little bit, you will find that he won not only some of the most important prizes regarding Children Literature, but also gained the respect of his profession. Not everybody can say that there is a prize named after them, nor a Museum devoted to his works.

Nevertheless, every minute of the presentations was worthy, because the other groups did a great work introducing David Shannon and his No, David!, Eric Carle and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Julia Donaldson and The Gruffalo, Maurice Sendak with Where The Wild Things Are, Marc Brown and his aardvark Arthur, Dr. Seuss and The Grinch, or E.B. White with Stuart Little. And there are more yet to be presented.

I guess that next time I go to a bookshop, I will look at the Children’s Literature shelves with more acknowledging eyes.

Reading is so important and not only in the academic context but in all the rest areas: they develop their imagination, understand other cultures, increase their general knowledge, to relax, to escape to someone else’s world… but what can we do as teachers to make children read?

There are many activities that we can do with the students in the library or in the classroom but they have to be adjusted to the age and level of the pupils. Here I give you some ideas to use with students to encourage reading:

-We can create a little library in the classroom. Each student has to bring his three favorites books and share them with the rest of the class so everybody can pick a book of one of his classmates loves. They should be change the collection of the books each trimester. The idea is that pupils choose a story according to their own likes.

-Meeting with authors. Pupils can establish a talk with an author about the book that they have been reading and ask him or her about the story or about his/her life as a writer.

-Storyteller time. An alternative to the typical storyteller is that the students of higher courses tell a story to the students of lower courses.

-Go on an excursion to an editorial to see the process of making books. Talk with the illustrators of the books and to the people who read books and who decide to publish them or not.

-Play role. Students should read a drama and perform it like in the theater. The objective with this activity is to teach the pupils to respect the comas and the different pauses during the reading in an entertaining way.

-Interactive activities. As we are working with TICS there are many activities that help to improve reading and writing and children can learn in a funny way. Here there is an example: http://www.genmagic.net/lengua3/alrev1.swf

This is just some ideas that we can use but there are many others so let’s blow up your imagination and create a new one. I hope you liked and it is useful for you.

During this week I was investigating with my peers about what makes an author the best.  The researching led me to evaluate the greatness of many authors and its origin. However after the thorough analysis I found out that the keystone is not the greatness itself but the target group and the aim.

With the information that I have acquired during this week I have made a classification of some authors taking into account the needs of the pupils.

To start with this classification as I said in my previous post I think the best author to work on contents is Eric Carl. His works are full of curricular questions (as in the book the very hungry caterpillar) and although for me is not the most important thing he created his very own book illustrations. It brought the right balance in the book composition and extra understanding support.

Moreover to promote good behaviors in my opinion the best author is Mark Brown with the Arthur´s books. These books are full of adventures but with the strangeness that the main character story is developed in a school scenario therefore the students will easily identify themselves. I believe that in this way we can promote modelling behavior attitudes.

Otherwise to deal with phobias or fears, my chosen author is Maurice Sendak. He is the writer of “Were the wild things are” and I think this book is advisable for everybody even adults. In my opinion we can extrapolate any fear to this story in order to overcome it.

Finally to encourage the students to write and read I have chosen two authors: Julia Donaldson and Alan Alexander Milne. I have chosen Julia Donaldson due to her book “The gruffalo”. This book is full of creativity and it explains how we can create real things using our imagination. That is the same that happen when we write; we are creating just from our imagination.

As well A.A. Milne came to my mind because of Winnie Pooh´s stories. This author created an imaginary world for his own son so it is specially tailor made for the children´s attention. With books like this we can foment the interest of our students to read. I have realized that reading is one of the best things that we can instill in our pupils.

I hope you find useful this post.

Feel free to come back with comments and share it: sharing is loving.

Hello everyone, this week I’m writing about a new activity that we have developed during this week. We can call this activity as Groups of Experts in Children’s literature. To complete the activity, first we have to form small groups, and then the teacher gave to each group the name of a Children’s literature Author. After that, each group had to prepare a short display in which they explain who the authors were, what they did and why are they important.

My group had to work about Maurice Sendak. We learned the basic details of his life and work, such as the fact that he lived during the holocaust and the Lindbergh kidnapping case, due to those facts his works had a gloomy atmosphere. His most popular work is “Where the wild things are”, which has sold over 19 million copies and there is also a movie about the story.

After doing this group activity, I realized that this is the perfect activity that can be done with children, if we adapt the topic and the task of the activity for one that is related with any of the subjects that are taught at school, such as science. The reason why it can be so great is because it has lots of characteristics which make it ideal for children, for instance, it makes students work in groups, so that, they can develop a cooperative learning activity, in which they create their own knowledge. In addition, this activity is also highly related with CLIL because they can learn the content by using English as a tool for developing the content. Furthermore, this activity also makes students share what they have learnt to the rest of their peers and finally for making them feel more interested in the activity we can offer them the possibility to assess their classmates displays with a sheet of paper that can give feedback to the teacher and to their partners.

In conclusion, I can say that all these activities that we are doing during the different weeks, are not just for us to learn content about authors. Their main aim is to provide us with new and creative ideas that we may use in the future with our students. As a personal task, I will think about the different activities that we are doing in classes, which are also adaptable for children.