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?