Get on stage!

Hi everyone! 

Today in class, my classmates and I have done a drama activity in group. It has been a short `morality´ play based on traditional story elements, in 7 scenes, called: The wise Woman. 

Before start telling you my experience, I would like to leave you some information about the play.

• Synopsis: When the king decides to ban old people from the town, this means a lot of pain and sorrow for old and young. But things get worse... and finally even the king understand that if it wasn´t for a young old boy and his mother, the country would be in serious trouble.

• Roles: chorus 4-6, soldier 1-4, Men 1-2, Women 1-2, old woman, her son, Queen and wise men 1-2. 

• Runtime : 7-8 minutes, more or less

• English level:  intermediate-B1

First of all I have to say that i don´t usually like drama activities. For that reason, I was scared when Susana, my teacher, explained us the activity. 

Initially, we were going to divide the class into several groups but we thought it is best to do it all together. So we chose a play with many characters and an adequate level of English. Then, we started to rehearse. It took us a few days to learn it. 

From my point of view, the result was great! We have all gotten into our role. We have disguised ourselves and we have represented the play several times.

After that, Susana showed us a video that taught us how to improve our performance (how to focus our voice, how to place ourselves in the space, the way to act, the way to move around the space...) 

It has been a good way to work in group helping, collaborating and sharing ideas and opinions. 

The truth is that it has been quite fun. 

storytelling activities

The other day in class, our teacher, Susana, explained us different activities to do before, while and after a storytelling. 

What I did with my classmates Samanta and Raquel was to invent different activities in relation to some stories. 

In order to give you an idea, below I leave you the activities that we did. Keep in mind that these activities are for children in early childhood education. Nevertheless, I hope you like them and that they help you to carry out your own activities. 

The rainbow fish: 

• We will show the children the cover of the book so they can make predictions. 
• We will talk about what they know about fishes (descriptions, experiences...)
• We will teach them what the scales are and what they are for
• They will be sticking or taking off the scales of a fish that we have done
• We will ask them to gesticulate the fish´s feelings
• Finally we will ask them to draw their own fish

Five little monkeys: 

• We will make them jump imitating the monkeys 
• We will teach them parts of the body with the song "head and shoulders" 
• They will count the monkeys during the song
• They will touch the aforementioned body parts 
• Finally we ask them about their feelings and experiences when they falling and hurting themselves 

The hare and the tortoise: 

• We will ask them to imitate the way of walking of different animals 
• We will work animals with some flashcard activities 
• They will run fast when the hace comes out and slowly when the turtle comes out. 
• Finally we will ask them to draw their favourite part of the story

Frog: 

• We will teach them different river animals using the "What missing?" flashcard technique
• We will play a dice play with the flashcards
• They will have to point the animals that we will mention in the story (without making mistakes)
• Finally we will ask them some questions about the story 

The mouse and the lion: 

• We will show them the cover of the book so they guess what the story is about 
• We will work the terms "big" and "small" with "big and small" song 
• They will have to make predictions throughout the story 
• They will imitate the gestures made by the lion and the mouse during the story
• Finally, we will ask them to represent their favourite part of the story (dramatization)

Using storybooks: Reading or telling stories?

Today I am going to answer the following question, than I find very interesting: Reading or telling stories?

Well, as my teachers Irune and Susana have taught me over these years, there are books that are made for read and other ones that are made for tell. Is very important to know which of these strategies is better to use in each case.

What I mean is that there are books we must read, because they have beautiful texts that have been written to be read; that have rhymes, instructions or sentences that can not be change because a variation change all the story. But, there are other books that we can learn by heart. That is, we can read them several times to learn the story and then tell them with our own words.  This allows us to make the necessary variations to adapt the story to our students (vocabulary, sentences, words...)

For all these reasons, my answer is that in infant education we have to use both of them. As teachers, we have to be able to choose properly. If we do not do it well, it can affect in the motivation or in the correct understanding of the story. 

Puppets

Puppets are very useful tools to encourage creative play and vocabulary development. They can be also great for us (teachers) to help we feel comfortable. In fact, they’re not only extremely useful as an educational toy that connects play with learning but also in supporting children’s development in several important areas.

When we use puppets, stories come to life so that the telling of the story becomes an enriched, fun learning experience that is even more meaningful for children. The puppets can speak, sing, dance, cry...There is truly no limit to their use because there is no specific way to use them that’s correct.

I believe that the most important thing, as teachers, is be able to motivate our children. In my humble opinion, this is a really useful way to keep our students engaged and enhance the interaction.  What I mean is that, by capturing children’s attention, motivating them, they will learn more.

Personally I think I will use puppets in my future class. Nevertheless, I think they are very expensive and I would like to have several puppets so, instead of buying them, I will do them by myself.  To make them we need imagination and very cheap materials such as socks, felt, glue, cardboards...

To end, I leave you some examples of puppets (sock puppet and finger puppets) that I have made and the video that I recorded with my classmates.  

Butterfly sock puppet 

The ugly duckling finger puppets 

The ugly duckling finger puppets

   

Carol Read: Ideas for using flashcards

Flash cards are a simple, useful and flexible resource for teaching vocabulary. They are a great way to present, practise and recycle vocabulary. As a future teacher, I would like to show you that there are lots of ways to use flashcards in the Young Learner classroom.

To start, I leave you the following video in which, Carol Read, explains 10 different activities to teach English in primary. I recommend you to see it because she explains how to use the flashcards in a very detailed way.  

The 10 activities she proposes are the following: 

1. Flash 
2. Slowly, slowly
3. What´s missing
4. Magic eyes
5. Lip reading 
6. Flashcard riddles 
7. Flashcard groups 
8. Hands on head 
9. Flashcard chain 
10. Kim´s game

I will not explain them because I think they are very well explained in the video. However, I am going to talk about which ones I find more suitable to use in infant education and my opinion about the flashcards as teaching-learning resource.

 ·       Flashcard in Infant education:

As I said before, the activities we have seen are for elementary school children; I mean, they are suitable for use in primary. Despite that, I would like to talk about some of them because I think we could do them in infant education.

Of the above activities, I would use “Flash” and “Slowly, slowly” activities because, in my opinion, when we use flashcards to introduce vocabulary in the classroom, we have to create some suspense or mystery about the cards. This will help students be more invested and more likely to remember the words.  Students are more receptive to learning when they are curious.

I also think “Flashcard riddles” is a good activity for very young children. It is a guessing game in which the child relates his previous knowledge (colours, numbers…) with the new vocabulary. This is interesting because they learn to relate all the vocabulary learned.

 ·       Flashcards as teaching-learning resource:

From my point of view, flashcards are an essential tool because they make a real impact on visual learners. As Gardner says, there are some types of intelligence. One of them is visual. In this way, flashcards help learners to have a very clear understanding of the word or concept. So, in this sense, flashcards help teachers to draw the visual learners' attention.

Even so, as teachers, we have to take into account that not all children learn in the same way. For that reason, in addition to flashcards, we must do other types of activities to teach vocabulary.  

The Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Positive Expectations

According to what The Pygmalion Effect tell us, the expectations a teacher has about his students, directly influence their academic performance. This can be seen perfectly in this video.

An exam is taken at a school. Then they put the names of all the students inside a hat and they take out several, randomly.  Teachers are told that these children are the smartest or that they have the best results.

In one hand, we can see that children to whom teachers pay more attention develop more skills and learn much more than the rest. This is because teachers create a warmer climate with these students and give them more input than to the rest of their classmates. I mean, they are treated in a closer way. That is, the “favourite” students are the ones who learn the most.

On the other hand, these prejudices cause damage to the other students because, by paying more attention to certain students, they are leaving others aside. This affects negatively since they do not receive enough input to develop all his abilities adequately. From my point of view, this is a contradiction since they are giving more attention or more input to those who do not need it and not the other way around.  In addition, they begin to feel themselves inferior.

Therefore, with this study, the main idea is confirmed: The expectations a teacher has about his students, directly influence their academic performance.

For that reason, as teachers we must be impartial and treat all children equally. Inevitably, as we are human, we will have favouritism towards our students. And, without realizing it, we put aside other children. But we must be professionals and we must remember that our goal is to ensure that all our students develop their skills to the fullest.

The butterfly finger play

Hi everyone. Yesterday in class, our teacher gave us some stories for pre-schoolers to practice the storytelling. My story was “The Butterfly finger play”, that is a story about the life cycle of a butterfly. It´s not too long (5 minutes) and it´s very funny because children learn the life cycle of a butterfly through a finger play. This story is recommended for children 4-7 years old. It doesn´t need materials, only our hands and fingers.

Here I leave you the story with the gestures. I hope you like it and you work it with your students.  

This butterfly is going to lay an egg…

here on this leaf.

 

Where is your egg? 

Here is the egg.

 Can you see? The egg is opening

Here is a caterpillar!

 Look! The caterpillar eats the egg.

Eat the egg of the leaf, everyone. Now the caterpillar is eating the leaf. 

Yum, yum, yum.  

Now the caterpillar is eating another leaf

Yum, yum, yum.  

The caterpillar is eating another leaf… and another! Yum, yum, yum. 

Now the caterpillar is very full. 

The caterpillar is climbing a tree.

Look the caterpillar is making a cocoon. 

The caterpillar is inside the cocoon, It’s very sleepy. 

But look! It´s moving 

And here is a beautiful butterfly. 

Fly, butterfly, fly!