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 week, my middle group had a great Poetry Workshop, and one of the activities that Raquel proposed us, had to do with the creation of Shape Poetry. In this case, we had to find inspiration using a model that she provided, and there where up to six different types of shape poetry for us to explore.

But, what is shape poetry? in Spanish we know it as caligrama, and according to Wikipedia, it is

A poem, phrase, or word […] arranged in a way that creates a visual image. The image created by the words expresses visually what the word, or words, say. In a poem, it manifests visually the theme presented by the text of the poem.

In my opinion, it is a great resource to present poetry to our pupils in a different way to the ‘create two verses that rhyme’. It is very visual, catchy and interesting. In this case, the poem can be enjoyed not only by listening to, or reading the words, but also by understanding the message that the picture is provoking.

It could be said that the words layout provide a visual clue to understand the poem. Moreover, it can engage those students whose visual-spatial intelligence is more developed than their linguistic intelligence, as they can create poems using few words.

Here you can find some examples taken from the blog “El baúl de las palabras”, created by a literature teacher from IES Federico García Lorca, in La Puebla de Cazalla (Sevilla). They are the proof that, with the proper guidance, pupils or young students can create beautiful poetry.

Furthermore, there are some artists who are able to create amazing designs, such as those by Joni James, in which she uses the names of the parts of the object she is ‘drawing’ to recreate it, as you can see on the bicycle, or words related to the topic, as in the guitar and the heart.

The next question is, can it be used in the classroom with Primary Education pupils? I would say yes. Although the examples above are more elaborated, there are simpler ideas (like the ones we created in class), that can help us teachers, to introduce poetry in the classroom in a really enjoyable and catchy way.

I hope you like the post. I encourage you to explore the topic, and also to have a look at Joni James’ gallery, where you will find authentic works/words or art.

Have a nice week!

Sources:

Blog “El Baúl de las palabras”. IES Federico García Lorca (La Puebla de Cazalla, Sevilla) http://lorcaelbauldelaspalabras.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/caligramas-en-ingles.html

Joni James Calligrams https://www.etsy.com/es/people/jonijames

Wikipedia (Definition of Calligram) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligram

On Monday, our teacher prepared new activities for us that were linked with poetry. The first activity that we did had a close relation with new technologies. In this activity, first we were divided in small groups of four or three people, then we had to search on YouTube for the poetry videos that we did and choose one of them.
They can be watched in this direction: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrzI70O2odaLe7LN52gX7Q)

After choosing, we had to create a QR code for the video that we had chosen using the website: https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/. Once we had the QR code ready; we started to think about an activity that can be done with the video that we have chosen, such as adding a new strophe or drawing objects that appear or should appear in the poetry, etc. You may think about the purpose of this activity; the aim of the activity was to print the QR codes with the activities suggested and place them in the corridors of the university, so that people could do the activities that we created thanks to their smartphone´s camera.

By the time we finished the activity we started with the next one which was linked with creation, art and visual spatial intelligence. The activity began when the teacher place in different parts of the class some sheets with a poetry in them, but this poetries had a special characteristic; its verses form shapes of objects that were related with them. We had to go read each sheet and create another example using the technique which appears in the sheet.

In conclusion, I have to say that I really liked the activities that we did, because they gave the opportunity to develop imagination and creativity, also they were motivational for us and they would be motivational for children as well, but a very interesting point that the activities suggested is the sense of continuity, I mean that the videos that we did some weeks ago have been used again for another activity. Furthermore, I think that this could be used in some many ways in schools for letting the children create a visible progression in the continuity of the activities that they do.

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

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