Hello once again! Nice to be here one week more! 
Today I am going to share with you the last project we are carrying out, the Aladdin’s workshop; and particularly, the workshop my group and I are preparing: Discovering the cultural secrets of Arabia.
During the last two weeks, we have been preparing a workshop that we are developing next Tuesday, 25th November, with a group of students from a public school in Alcalá de Henares.
The pillars of this project are the powerful and multiple uses of children films in education. I think that all of us are sure that every film, even those that we think are simple and with a basic plot, can be used in many different ways to present the contents to kids through a motivating, enjoyable and cross-curricular methodology, and interesting and close materials and resources.
For this project, the workshops are devoted to teaching Science contents through English and through Aladdin’s film. For that, we are working on six different workshops, each of them dedicated to one Science topic; using the characters, places, elements and other aspects present in Aladdin’s film as the medium to carry out the teaching-learning process.
In my case, my group decided to work on Arabian culture (“The secrets of Arabia”), as the film is constantly presenting, both directly through the dialogues or songs, or indirectly, by just showing them in the scenes, the main aspects of that area and its culture: places in Arabia, artistic elements such as the decoration of the streets or houses, the music, instruments and dances; market products like food or ornaments, animals, monuments, laws and rules, clothing, social classes, gender differences (men vs. women), religious beliefs, etc.
As you can see, there is an enormous amount of elements that we can work on. However, we are only having twenty minutes to develop the whole workshop, so we have chosen the four following topics for teaching them directly:
- Geography: Location of Arabia in the world map and the Geography of the country.
- Market: products sold in markets and ways of buying them.
- Palace: social classes and laws of Arabia.
- Palace Gardens: Art, music, instruments and dances.
Furthermore, we have to take into account that we are living in the era of technology, so we are introducing ICTs in almost every corner. Then, the whiteboard will be used to show the maps and to present the Palace rooms in which the students will click to see the different laws of Arabia; and a computer is used to watch the Arabian dance and listen to the song while learning the choreography.
Finally, to conclude the workshop, we are letting the kids use their cameras to feel like tourists and take pictures or selfies in every corner, and we are giving them a souvenir from Arabia to thank them for their visit and wish them a good day.
Good afternoon Rocio!
First thing I have to say is that it is really a pity that we did not have the opportunity to see other groups’ activities. I have really enjoyed doing the activities we did in our group “Life in the desert”, and I also appreciate that some of our classmates are writing about what they did in their groups, because these are ideas that we can all share and they can be helpful for our future as primary teachers.
As I have also mentioned in my last post, I think this was a great opportunity for us to see how to deal with real children and also what kind of activities are good for them, taking into account that the activities should be catchy for them, but also challenging and useful to improve their knowledge.
I have to say as well that at the beginning I thought that with just one film we were not going to have enough materials or ideas for all the groups we made, but at the end I realized how much things we can extract and use with using just a film.
And just to end up with, thank you very much for sharing your activities with us!
Hi Abú! We have already finished our workshop with the kids and I am really satisfied with our work, even with our classmates’ involvement in the workshop too. As Yoli said, I would have liked to have the opportunity to see our classmates development of the activities, it would have been so rewarding for all of us.
Besides, I decided commenting on you because you exposed very well the whole idea of our workshop and once we have carried it out I would like to highlight those aspect I considered essential for the development of the project.
In first place, motivation is crucial. We all know that and I think we did our best in order to achieve that. We could see the enthusiasm of some of the students in their faces and it was so rewarding.
Secondly, team work was essential too. Involvement, planning, communication and ability for improvising are those characteristics I would highlight not only in our work but also in every workshop carried out in a school. Children could notice the lack of communication, planning or involvement from the first moment. Fortunately, we did a good cooperative work.
Last but not least, taking into account and carrying out so much aspects, advices and contents learning during these years was completely necessary for this project. So I am very grateful for have had this opportunity to work with children in our last year in the university.