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.

This is why I am totally sure that our students will have fun if we let them the opportunity to take pleasure in this kind of classes. That is why, I am going to remind you some of the interesting and enjoyable activities we can take into account from our Exploring Children´s Literature subject by Raquel Fernández.

First of all we played introductory and motivating games, such as “Frozen Characters”, to make us feel comfortable and awake. In this game, some music was played, and when it stopped, we had to represent a fairy tale, superhero or other similar character, without moving. Imagination and body representation were clearly being developed in the students.

Aladdin´s carpet, Snow White, etc.

After that, we played some games that required group participation to achieve the objectives. One of these games was “Frozen Scenes”.  In this activity we had to represent, without moving, one scene we chose of a given film, for instance Aladdin or Snow White. Imagination, body representation, cooperation and communication are reinforced with this kind of games.

Snow White´s scene.

To end with, we played a fun game. “Invented Machine” was a cool down game in which, one person, as a beginner, had to make an invented movement and sound. Then, one by one, the rest had to join into the machine making a new movement and sound, having coherence with the ones that were already made by others. Finally all of us built an amazing fancy machine. It was a nice end of the class, because all of us contributed to achieve the same thing. Pure imagination and body representation was developed in this activity.

Other games we played, that I would like to mention are: “Good Morning Walk”, “Building a new Scene”, “Alphabet Conversation”, “Photo Describing” and “Moving arms and Conversation Coordination”. If you are interested in knowing what they were about, just leave a comment and let me know.

As we know from our childhood and know now from our own experience, you might agree with me that this kind of games are really motivating for students. They are a way of combining learning with having fun (that is why I call them games all the time), in which children develop multiple intelligences such as Kinesthetic or Interpersonal; involving and building up some skills as imagination, communication and creativity. At the same time contents of different topics can be adapted to these games and taught in a cross curricular way.

Again, university is giving us training and resources to show our best in education, and to make students´ learning be the best and enriching thing of their lives.

During the last Medium group session, we worked on the last literary genre: drama. The lesson was especially focused on learning different ways of promoting drama skills, as well as other competences and abilities, in educative contexts through active group games.

Instead of carrying out the lesson inside the classroom, our teacher Raquel decided to make us experience the games, so that we could put ourselves in the students’ shoes and realise how useful and fun they were. So, we went to the gym and we became kids for two hours, playing a lot!. Here I want to share with you three of the games, concretely those I liked the most:

On the one hand, the “Frozen film frames”. For developing this activity, we had to walk around the gym at the rhythm of the music. When the music was stopped, we had to remain still, representing one literary character by doing one of their typical actions (i.e: Hercules showing his biceps). Then, the teacher asked some of us who we were and what we were doing.

After playing individually for some times, we played the same game in groups. In this case, when the music was stopped, the teacher said the name of a children’s book and we had to arrange in small groups, assign a character to each person and represent one of the most important situations of the story.

Through this game, children develop drama skills (body language, improvisation, role-playing…), as well as creativity, imagination and descriptions. Furthermore, it can also be used to teach and revise subject contents, as, for example, the topic to represent could be “invertabrate animals” or “landforms”.

Seven dwarfs going to work. – Source: Raquel Fernández

On the other hand, the “Photo Album”. For this game, two people sat down in one bench and pretended that they were looking at a photo album and talked about the pictures. Meanwhile, some other students were standing up, next to them, and displayed the situations described, freezing as photographs.

Finally, the “Machine”, a very fun game to foster group union and cooperative work. It consists on creating a machine. For that, all the students make a circle and one of them stays in the centre. This kid starts to do a repetitive sound (i. e: beep – beep – beep), and then, one by one, the other students joins the machine by touching one of the members and making another different sound (i.e: brrrrrrrrbrbrbrbrbrrrrrr); until everybody is a part of the machine and all sounds sound together at the same time.

As you may imagine and I believe, all these games attract the attention of the students since the very beginning and they find them really interesting, so every teacher can use them to teach any subject content or to foster different competences and skills.

Do you know any other game for drama lessons? I am wishing to hear about them!!

Thank you for visiting!