BILINGUAL THEATRE: Aladdin ICT project

The other day we were working in class how could we convert a topic into a dialogue, and how we could work with it with children like in a theatre. At the beginning wasn’t natural at all but, finally, after practicing in silent at the beginning, and then loudly with the rest of the group, the result was incredible! We discovered that two of our mates, Noelia and Guio, have a great possibility as actresses in the future! They were very funny.
 

The other day, somehow, we applied with the story telling in the ICT project, these skills that we worked in class. It is important to pronounce properly, to speak loudly and with a normal speed, but emphasizing in the important points of the text.

I am going to make a little summary of how we organized our tale:

We worked the story of Aladdin. We were dressed up with the costumes representing each of the main characters: Jafar, the Magic Carpet, Princess Jasmine, The Sultan, Aladdin, Iago,Abu and the Genie.  Our fairy god mother was Sara, who accompanied a whole group of eight children through four different tales.

Meanwhile in Agrabah Iago started telling the story of Aladdin and the rest of the characters made a little performance. Then, as you already know, the end disappeared and the children had to say the magic words: GENIE, WAKE UP! A few times until the Genie, me, appeared from behind the magic lamp. I divided children into two groups (i.e. the group of Aladdin and Abu) and they had to go with the correspondent character. Then, they had to pass through the magic lamp and take 5 magical pictures. As we have divided in two small groups, we could do a closer guidance in the rebuilding of the story and it was more direct and clear for children. Later, the Genie had to come back again into the lamp and he took a magic box full of dialogues. Those dialogues were small sentences that we prepared, thinking in the different characters, so the students could choose a picture and prepare the dialogue of that picture. Then, we expected to have more time and do the performance of those scenes that they had created, but the time flew too fast and this last part of the plan was impossible to follow. At the end, we congratulated children and we gave them a medal with a magic lamp for each student.

It has been an incredible experience! I am fascinated with this workshop that we have created. I am also very happy with my team! They are very creative and responsible mates who have worked perfectly! The artists of this tale are: Patricia Peláez, Itziar Rebollo, Marta García, Clara Vilches, Guiomar Caballero, Noelia Barroso, Sandra Anaya, Sara Blanco and me, Leticia de la Serna.

And in the break time...

POEMS

The other day in class we were talking about poems and what children think about them.

Raquel started the class with a HAIKU, avery short form of Japanese poetry read in one breathe, which was a new type of poetry that I was unaware of it. 

Raquel shared with us very worrying comments of children about poetry. They think working with poems is boring, difficult and some of them haven’t ever read a poem in English. 

WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE THIS!

Sometimes children don’t know that they are doing poetry. Raquel showed us some sentences of children from 4 to 8 that describe LOVE. Here I attach some examples:

• "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." ~ Rebecca- age 8  

• "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." ~ Billy - age 4  

• "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." ~ Karl - age 5  

• "Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs." ~ Chrissy - age 6

•  And my favourite one: "Love is what makes you smile when you're tired." ~ Terri - age 4  

 These children are doing poetry, and I may say that they are doing a marvelous one.

We were working in class a different way of working with poems in the classroom. In groups of 3 or 4 students we had to move from one table to the other, in order to complete the task together. 

 1. First, we had to read individually the poem. There were different types of poems: 

          a) List poem 

          b) Riddle poem

          c) Letter poem

2. Then, we share our opinions with the people in the group. 

3. Each poem had a different task to do. In some of them, we had to add a part of the poem. In other, we had to answer a questions or solving a problem.  

4. At the end, we share our poems with the rest of the class.

It’s amazing the good work that we did! From the beginning we were very motivated in the task. I was doing my poems with Maria Salazar and Cristina Cano and I had so much fun working with them! I would like to share some of our poems with you.

"A magic dust that makes you fly.

 A Happiness machine

 The most beautiful animal in the world

 A magic chocolate machine

 A magic lamp

 A teletransportes

 The power of invisibility

 The most beautiful place in the world

 A fairy mother"

 "What do you collect?

Fruit, vegetables and fish

or cookies, chocolate and sweets?"

In order to work poems with children, I consider useful to use pictures next to the keywords, contextualize the poem at the beginning, tell the child to draw a part of the poem and with the other classmates build a “comic poem”, to represent what is happening in the poem, to create hypothesis about it, and so on.

What do you think about using poems in class? Do you think that students will be afraid to work with them or you consider that they will have fun while learning a new way of reading? Do you like poetry? Have you ever write a poem in Spanish or English only for pleasure?

Muzzy

MUZZY

Hello everyone! Have you ever hear about Muzzy? THIS IS MY CHILDHOOD!!! Today I’m going to dedicate my blog to him and his friends. I hope you will like them. 

 

As you already know, a second language builds a bridge to another culture and opens the door to new friendships and adventures. We have to guide and follow our students through these paths and show them how fun could it be.

 

Muzzy is an animated greenish-blue extraterrestrial who loves eating clocks. He goes to Gondoland, where all the adventures take place. In the kingdom there are the King Nigel, a lion; Queen Erza, a rat; Princess Sylvia, a poodle; Bob the gardener, a mouse; and Corvax, the evil scientist, a goblin. 

With them, the kids will learn a lot of English structures and vocabulary!

Here I attach the first lesson, so you can get familiarized with the characters: Muzzy 

 

Muzzy was created by the BBC in 1986. Muzzy is known for millions of children. It was a movie“Muzzy in Gondoland” that was divided into different lessons. In each lessons the characters follow the same structures of the sentences, they repeat a lot the keywords and give different examples. It is very visual way to practice listening, speaking and readying at the same time. Which CLIL methodology you will use in order to reinforce the knowledge?

In my opinion, using TV programs as a tool is very important because the generations nowadays have an amazingly big visual memory. Of course it is not enough. We have to work the knowledge in the classroom, working more in the vocabulary and structures that appear in the TV lesson or, in the opposite way, we can use the video after learning the contents in class, to show students how to put the knowledge learnt in a meaningful context.

How would you work with this TV series?  What do you think about using TV series as a tool?

Much more than Cinderella

Do you like fairytales? Do you used to watch/read them when you were a child?

The other day we were talking about Cinderella in class. At the beginning Raquel asked us to join groups of 2 or 3 people and reconstruct, with as many details as we could, the plot of the story. We had to remember the main characters, events, objects and so on. Then, she divided the class in two groups and each of us had to read a different version of the same story. 

                              

 My group had to read Grimms’ version “Ascenputtel”.

 

The other group had to read Perrault’s version “Cinderella/The Little Glass Slipper”. 

 

Raquel gave us 10 minutes to read individually the story. Then, we had to find someone from the other group and exchange information about the characteristics of the stories. I was very surprised when we put in common both versions.  We discovered how many differences they had. What shock me the most was that they were not just fairytales, they had much more transcendence in the background.  

We were discussing about how Disney had manipulate the stories in order to “send” some messages to children. 

We said some ideas such us:

1. The girl is always passive and needs the help of other characters in order to do something. 
2. The importance of the beauty in a female.
3. Triunph is related with beauty and money.

What do you think about this?  Do you think children realize this while they are watching a movie? Do you think adults sometimes try to go too deeper while analyzing infant movies?

I really recommend you to read each version of Cinderella, and then watch the Disney movie in order to see the differences. I attach here the links where you can find the stories and also the trailer of the Disney movie.

• Ascenputtel by Grimms: http://stenzel.ucdavis.edu/180/anthology/aschenputtel.html 
• The little Glass Slipper by Perrault: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault06.html 
• Trailes of the Disney movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qzj4jjC2gw