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

Hi everyone! Welcome again!

Today I would like to devote this entry to talk about a topic which I consider is quite interesting, “Subversive messages hidden under infant literature”. It came up a few days ago, in our lesson focused on Nursery rhymes. The lesson was divided into three stages. The first one was a kind of introductory stage. Raquel made us builders of our own knowledge using different techniques to discover what Nursery Rhymes are, its origin and which elements characterise it. Some of those techniques were: analysing typical nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, and carrying out a “dictogloss”. Throughout the last stage we had so much fun dramatizing different types of choral reading with Nursery rhymes as the “Solo lines” (one by one).

Dramatizing “Little Jack Horner”

Although during the introductory stage, we dealt with the topic a little bit (Nursery rhymes were originally created to hide political subversive messages), it was at the 2^nd stage when we could be fully aware of what hidden subversive messages meant, through real examples. In other words, real Nursery Rhymes and the concrete hidden message that was under each of them.  One example of it was the Nursery Rhyme named “Mary, Mary, quite contrary”. Its main character, although children don’t know it and most of us either, is the daughter of Henry the 8th, and some of the objects which appear refer to instruments of torture.

Nursery Rhymes and the concrete hidden message that was under each of them.

It piques my curiosity, so I decided to investigate which was the situation of the topic nowadays. Understanding subversive books as those which awaken our rebel side, something that surprises me, was the number of authors that are in favour of these kinds of infant literary books.

A staunch supporter of them, and detractor of those which she considers “contain what adults have decided [children] have to know” (1998) is Alison Lurie. Her opinion is faithfully reflected in the title of her work Don’t tell the grown-ups. According to the writer Lucy Fuchs (1984), the appeal of these works lies in the fact that “they discuss problems that are foremost in many children’s minds and that they often feel they cannot discuss with their parents”. There are also Spanish writers who support this kind of books, as the Mexican Jaime Alfonso Sandoval. He argues that subversive books are necessary due to the fact that they “allow children in a way to expose their thoughts or fears in a symbolic way” as well as to know “the real world they will have to face” (Sandoval cited by Wences, 2008).

What do you think about it? If you don’t know it, I think it would be appropriate to devote a little bit of time to reflect on it, due to the fact that as teachers we will be one of the most influential person in our pupil’s literary life.

Some of the titles that the previously mentioned authors present as “subversives”

Lurie, A. (1998). Don’t tell the grown-ups: the subversive power of children’s literature. Little, Brown.

Fuchs, L. (1984). The Hidden Messages in Children’s Books.

Wences, M. (2008, 15 June). Los libros infantiles deben ser subversivos, asegura Jaime Alfonso Sandoval. La Jornada Guerrero. Recovered from: http://www.lajornadaguerrero.com.mx/2008/06/15/index.php?section=cultura&article=013n2cul