First of all I have to say that the location of the lesson was in the gym instead of in a regular classroom and what we were going to do there was more related with a theatre or body expression class than with a literature lesson. At the beginning we all were a little bit shy and afraid of doing what Raquel asked but little by little we were more relaxed.

Although the lesson was different and I felt a bit confusing it was really funny, enjoyable and original. We all participated in a very active way being volunteers or being a part of a performance, and I thought…why not using this with primary students to develop literature? It may seem crazy or difficult to carry it out but not impossible, besides it has a lot of adaptations for everything we want to teach.

So what are the advantages of using theater in school?

-It develops children imagination, creativity and the different ways of expression, not only language using all the senses.

-It gives advantages to the relationships between peers and the teacher.

-Children assimilate better the concepts and knowledge if they have to represent any idea of a subject.

-Doing theater in the class help students to talk in front of an audience, being more self-confident, to get over shyness and to express their ideas and feelings.

-It reinforces the academic task as language, reading and literature through theater plays and roles.

-Using theater in the classroom introduce children into art and history.

Some of these ideas are from a very interesting blog I found called Tiching Blog and I recommend you to take it a look. Here is the link http://blog.tiching.com/el-teatro-una-herramienta-mas-en-el-aula/

In my opinion we should use more theatre in class and body language because it has a lot of advantage we can use in many different ways. It was very nice to do all those activities and think how we could adapt them to a literature class. I enjoyed so much the lesson, the hours flied and I learnt a lot.

This post comes a bit late, but I hope you can enjoy it as the rest that I have written, or even more

I have to say as well that it is the last post we have to make for this subject and, for this reason, I would like to do a little summary about the things I have learnt and I liked the most in this semester.

We started the subject with some content based things that we should now like the difference between phonetics and phonology, the meaning of literacy or the dimensions of literacy, but very soon we went into more practical activities in which we practice by ourselves the things we were learning.

I am sure that all or nearly all of my classmates can remember the “Chocolate cake” video of Michael Rosen, or the different versions of Cinderella (we even created a “map” with our own version), or the storytelling each group in our class created.

We also had some lessons in which we were responsible of creating activities with a QR code, a Glogster or even dress ourselves as one of the characters of Aladdin’s film because some students from a school had to come and we had to teach them some contents using the film.

People can think “well, you were just having fun in your lessons, but you did not learn anything”. And my answer to this is: you really do not know how good is to learn things at the same time as you are having fun with your teacher and your classmates.

I can say now, at the end of the semester, that I have learnt a lot of new things and I am also sure that my classmates and I are full of new resources, techniques, activities, contents and so on to face English Literature in our future lessons with Primary Students.

Just to finish with, I would like to say that my feelings about this last post are very different: on one hand I feel a bit more free now because I have felt a bit stress with all the projects we had to do, not only in this subject, but on the other hand, every time I look into the past (recent past) the things that I remember the most are the good moments I had as I was working on these projects and how many things I can do now that I could not do before.

Thank you very much for visiting!

This project consisted on the creation of a twenty minutes workshop focus on one topic and with a special context, the story of Aladdin.

Firstly I am going to talk about the preparation of these kind projects. I have to said that although prepare activities for twenty minutes look very easy, we have to take into account that this activities should be significant. It means, for me it has not sense prepare activities just for spend time. Significant learning should be included. Furthermore we wanted to include the use of ICTs and it gave an extra difficulty to the preparation. The reason was that we had to take into account the level of the students and the possibility of have technical problems, such as internet problems. In addition, this preparation also included the creation of a catchy environment. For me it was the hardest and the funniest part of the project. The hardest because we created a “jaima” in the class and we had to bring a lot of very heavy material such as carpets. The funnies because, although we spent a lot of time, we enjoyed a lot the process.

Moreover the day of the workshop was very different of what I though. Improvisation is the best word to define my feelings of this day. For example, during the first performance we ran a lot to achieve the time, but suddenly we discovered that we had ten minutes more. In this time we started to include new element such a choreography that we have prepared for be done just by us. Also in other performances the time was shorter, and we had to delete some activities from our plans.

But finally the results were unbeatable. I am really proud of what we did, and also I think that I learned a lot from this experience. Now I fell that I am more prepare for the management of student, for the inclusion of literature elements in the workshops, for the control of the time of the activities and my self-confident with students has grown since this moment.

In conclusion I fell satisfied. And as this is probably my last post I will like to say good bye and mention that it was a pleasure shared my posts with all of you.

I have written since I can remember. Sometimes I just let my imagination take me wherever it wanted to go, and wrote until my eyelids dropped. Other times, I had to push myself in order to get something readable that met the established criteria for a given task. But every time, I did my best to make it work.

A few weeks ago, our teacher asked us to create a Fairy Tale Character. Yes! I thought. That was possibly the best chore I had this semester. She provided us with a template (included below) that we had to use to make this character as real as possible. We were required to create the psychological aspects of the characters, more than the usual physical descriptions. And depending on how comfortable students felt about dealing with feelings, some of us were thrilled to bits, while others thought OMG! How are we going to do this?

And here is the point. Creating a character requires, and deserves, a level of commitment that transforms the task into something serious. You need to be able to put yourself on your character’s shoes, and the last item of the template (Your personal connection with the character), allowed me to think that it could have a further use, such as including our characters in a story. In the end, if you have created them, who could understand them better than yourself?

But that wasn’t the case. This week, the teacher told us that we would be required to write, in groups of four or five people, the plot of a story, using characters created by others. It made everything much more difficult and challenging. What if the creators of Alexiah, Mr. Fitman, Guffita or Wickedmore (the characters my group had to include in our story) don’t like what we have done with them? That was my biggest fear when we started working on the project.

Now the project is almost done, and we have to present it to the rest of the class. I wonder what would be left of the character I create. I know how she thinks, I know what she wants. Will she behave the way I expect? I will have the chance to check it next Tuesday. I can’t wait.

I have to confess that at the beginning I was a little bit scared about it, because during my scholar life I had never been really fond of literature. I loved reading and knowing by myself, but I struggled with the academic aspect. It is true that during the degree, we had other subjects about children’s literature; however, this one has been the key to change my mind completely (imagine how much it affected on me that I am going to take my Final Dissertation about one of its contents! ). Thanks to this subject I have discovered that there are not complex content, but wrong ways to approach or teach them.

Another of the most valuable things that I have learnt from this subject, apart from myriad of resources, materials and great techniques, is that we must teach how to love and enjoy literature instead of how to memorise thousands of data. Doing so, our pupils will achieve a much more meaningful learning.

Maybe this last entry should be devoted to reflect about everything we have learnt along the subject (which is not little) as I was doing a few lines above. However I could not leave without sharing with you one last thing I met a few weeks ago and found it very interesting, especially after what has been occurring recently:  Racist overtones in Disney’s stories.

In words of Rebecca Rabison (2008) “most of the Disney story lines are about people who are white” (p.71). This fact, as Morawski or Harris (cited by Rabison, 2008) explained, has a clear connection with “United states’ political and representational systems that implicate ‘white’ as the national American identity and normalize white people and their behaviour” (pp. 71-72). In fact, taking into account the explanations of Fine (cited by Rabison, 2008) this situation has gone beyond, transmitting as a result a clear connection between the Whiteness concept with others such as objectivity, normality, truth, knowledge, merit…

In the case of the stories which are based just in a “white world” with only white characters, without any choice criminals are also white. That can then lead us to think that “crime is represented as largely unrelated to race” (Rabison, 2008, p. 73).

However, although they are just a few, there are also some exceptions in which non-white characters are included. When it happens, as Rabison (2008) describes, this exceptions to Disney prototypes (people of colour) “are portrayed using racial [and negative] stereotypes” (p. 73); whereas white ones are glorified (2008). Bearing in mind that information, everyone can deduce what it actually ensues: “the criminals in these Disney films are the people from non-white races”, which are commonly chastised by the white ones. (Rabison, 2008, p.73).

Furthermore Giroux (cited by Rabison, 2008) argues that as a result of it, representations and codes which taught that “cultural differences [which differ from] the imprint of white (…) are deviant, inferior, unintelligent, and a threat to be overcome”, are been given to children (p.74). In other words it “suggests to children that people of colour are inherently criminal” (Rabison, 2008, p.78).

Different and clear examples of this situation which are provided by the same author (2008) are the following ones:

In lots of Disney stories, as it happen in Pinocchio (1940), villains are represented with darker skin and hair, as well as with a strong accent (Stromboli, in the previously mentioned story), whereas good characters (Geppetto) are characterised by light skin and hair and softer face features.

http://es.disney.wikia.com

Similarly occurs in Aladdin (1992), in which although all the characters belong to the Arabian culture, Jafar is strongly characterised with Arabic features (almond-shaped and ripped eyes, bulbous noses, long beards, and a strong accent) while Aladdin “appears ‘Americanized’” (Giroux, cited by Rabison, 2008, p.75) with lighter skin, small nose, no accent…

http://www.destructoid.com

Finally another example appeared in the Lady and the Tramp (1955). In this case is the Asian culture the one that is racially portrait through two cruel, sly, greedy and criminal Siamese cats, completely different from the other animals which belong to high class, have good morals, and speak with Western, British and American accents. (Rabison, 2008)

http://www.filmwerk.co.uk

I would like to conclude by saying that my purpose devoting the last entry to this topic, was simply to transmit you the importance and necessity of carrying out an extremely carefully analysis, not only of those stories that have been part of us since our infancy, but of every single story we will offer to our future pupils, paying special attention to those messages related with stereotypes that can have such a big influence on them.

I am sure you will do your best bilingual teachers

Sincerelly,

Azu

P.S: Good luck for all the experiences that we will soon begin to live

Rabison, R. C. (2008). Deviance in Disney: Representations of Crime in Disney Films, A Qualitative Analysis. Honors Theses, 148.

For the activity that we designed we were all dressed-up as characters from Aladdin’s film. And the plot of our activity begins by the time the Genie comes back from his trip around the world. Then in the activity the Genie appears with loads of presents that he took for Aladdin and Jasmine. During the activity children have to classify all the presents that the Genie bring for them depending on the country that the presents came from and by the time they finish it they have to define the route that the Genie follow during his holidays around the world.

It was a really fun and interesting project in which all of us learnt and had a great time, although it would be hard to say who enjoyed it more; the children or us.

Secondly I´m going to talk about the THEATRE activity that we did this week, which personally I think that it has loads of possibilities.

As I’ve just said, during this week we used the theatre as a tool for bringing English to students in a motivational way. Now I’m going to explain some of them.

For the first activity there need to be at least two pairs of people. The members of each pair have to be sitting in a single line and the one that is behind has to pretend that his arms are his partner´s arms. So once the two pairs are prepared, they will have to play a role such as pretending to be in a job interview, while the audience (the rest of the class) asks them questions.

In addition, in the next activity the students will form groups of four to six people. Then, two of them will be playing a role in which they are friends and for example, they are talking about the last holidays of one of them. While they are speaking the rest of the group members have to perform what the others are saying.

In conclusion, I think that these two activities can easily be done with primary students and also, they can be used as a cross-curricular activity, in order to review and learn almost every topic that they study at class in any other subject.

If we go to other Primary Education classes, we will observe that many teachers who use films in an appropriate way as a didactic resource and others who do not. Many teachers like cinema and think it is a good method to use in the class but they don’t know how to introduce it correctly in the class. From my own experience, I have witnessed, from the Primary stage until even the university, that a minority of teachers have played a film in relation to the content we were watching in class. In this, the simple role of the teacher was to play the film and here ends everything. Supposedly, the teacher thinks that students have understood the film, know how to relate it with the content. However, there is no kind of scaffolding, nor exercises of expression, creativity to work the film…

Precisely for that reason, my objective on writing this post is to provide some methodological ideas for the use of films in the Primary Education class due to I am totally in favour about its use:

• To do as we are doing in class with the Film Project: Each student has to create its own character. These are gathered and students write a plot/film invented with the aspects more interesting for students, such as actions, characteristics, scenery, dialogues…
• In a chronological order and by sequences or scenes of short length (depending on the duration of the scene, but more or less 1 or 2 minutes). To begin with, it consists in watching the film with no sound and imagine what characters are talking, or describe the scene, characters, etc… Once, to play the scene-sequence with no sound but with subtitles. And finally, play the scene with sound and subtitles.
• Provide like a ‘writing frame for films’ with the title, scene, main and secondary characters; scenery (background); Scene’s plot; dialogues; Depending on the film … historical moment, contextualisation, period; Character’s characterisation (clothes, colours, personality…); setting…
• Cross curricular films: We can watch a film and relate it to the content seen in class; For example: If we analise ‘The Lion King’ we can relate it to the Science subject with the different habitats, vertebrates and invertebrates animals, the food chain…;
• Regarding the language, we can work in films with the flash-back sequences where it is blend the past and present. Furthermore, the student can create an ending regarding the future.

To sum up, cinema can provide student to develop its comprehension skills of creation, analysis. Also, as a way of expressing feelings, emotions promoting a positive and confident atmosphere providing the collaborative work.

I have to be sincere and tell you that the first time I heard it I thought “that’s a joke and it can’t be true, how we can’t teach children how to write with pen and paper? Are the Finnish teachers crazy this morning?”.

Then I start thinking deeply about it and that it could be a reasonable option to change our methodology of learning how to write because we do almost everything with our “smart-devices”, so practically we don’t need to write in a paper. Also in schools, nowadays with the ICT in class we don’t need to spend lot of time making photocopies to class, we just find a webpage and the classroom projector do all the effort for us showing it to all the students, and to fill it, the students only have to stand up and touch with their finger the digital whiteboard and write the correct answer.

Finnish government said that they will make that change in September 2016 (for the 2016/2017 course). Maybe in Spain we need more time to apply it in a school. First of all, we need to apply at all the ICT in schools because not all the classes have one and not all the teachers know how to use it correctly, so first we need to improve this.

When we had done it, the next step could be the tablets for every child, so they can do their homework at home or in class in their tablet, so they don’t have to carry to class and go back home with a lot of books and notebooks, they only need their tablet!

Then, the third step could be the one the Finnish people will do in 2016: starting to teach children how to write in their tablets rather than in paper. Because they will use more those devices than paper at that year.

Apart from the children learning, we have to think that how much words do we write in a paper and how much do we write in our “smart-devices”. If you think on it, I’m sure that we spend more time writing in our smartphone or in our computer than writing in a paper. For example:

• We can write our grocery list in our Google Keep app rather than in a sticky note
• Create a mind map using the Evernote app rather than doing it a paper
• Talk to our cousin in France by the Skype app rather than sending him a letter
• Write a post to tell the world our thinking about something using a WordPress blog rather than publishing it in a newspaper

Do you imagine the next step of the education to implement the ICT in schools? Do you imagine a world without school bags? And without “physical” schools? We can imagine, but there is something that will never disappear: teachers.

Hi everyone,

I think this post could be the last one at least for now. For the last post, because this is ending, I would you to talk about the great experience during this last week that I could put into practice on Monday. I cannot say a lot of things, because there is a group that left to do it some activities that I did on Monday but I want to say you some of my experiences during the class.

First of all, I am going to star with the first day. It was Monday, and as all Monday people came to class a little bit tired because of the weekend. We were in a different place, not in our class but in the “Polivalente” building. This was the first thing I liked because I consider catchy and motivate for us to change the space in which we normally have the classes.

I am 28 years old, but in that class I felt like a child of 8-10 years old because I loved the things that I was doing. Each activity was better than the previous one. It was not only a literature class, but also it could be useful for a Science class, Physical education class and also for English class (using some tenses, such as past continuous, past simple, etc.)

It was really funny, because we could relate with the workshop of Aladdin, due to in some cases we have to imitate some characters of fairy tales, and some of us chose this film to imitate characters because it was recent. But it was not so easy, only Aladdin, also the Lion King, Rapunzel, Cinderella, etc…all the fairy tales that we can remember in that moment.

Is there any better idea to motivate them for the reading than this?

In my opinion, it is very important to maintain the attention of your students and for this it could be great to do some activities similar to the activities that we did on Monday. On Monday, it could be related also with role playing. Related with role playing and the motivation in class, I have been looking a website in which tell us a project that they did for Infant education, but I consider fantastic and perfect for our future students, maybe changing the topic of the project depending on what we want to work with them, or maybe some activities or some things that in this project are very easy for students of Primary. I love the idea to prepare and motivate our students for the topic we want to. I have to say that I know it is difficult to do all of these activities in class in our daily life because we have no time, but I am talking about one or two topics in a year not all the topics doing the same.

Here you have the link if you want to take a look. http://dulceinfantil.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/proyecto-bienvenidos-bordo-piratas.html