MULAN

Hi partners, I am going to write my last post and it will be about the movie Mulan! We have seen this film for two class sessions in order to analyze different aspects of the film.

First of all, Mulan is a movie that tells the story of a young girl who must pass herself off a man to save her elder father of going to war, so she decides to take on the characteristics of a soldier: be brave and masculine. This is where is introduced the male behavior based on being rude, rudeness, adventures, dirt, wars, etc. With this the film pretend to highlight the sexist stereotype, the male represents force and the defense of the country, while the female represents beauty, delicacy and submission to men.

To continue, it is very important to refer to the personality of Mulan, which is passed by man because, as a woman it would have been impossible to do what she does in the film. And however, at the end is showed that a girl can do the same as a man, turning out to be a heroine, but at the same time, she is a revolutionary who is denounced for betraying to her family and to the social norms of that time in China. 

Finally, the movie criticizes the sexist behavior where the woman is in a subordinate position, showing the characteristics that distinguish the typical Disney princess films. I strongly think that using this kind of movies with primary students could be positive, because apart from having a good time, then you can perform very dynamic and fun activities analyzing these topics related with human awareness and with education for citizenship.

Regards :)

FAIRY TALE CHARACTER

Hi all friends again,

Today I have decided to speak about the creation of the fairy tale characters of Raquel´s seminar and I must say, that from the first moment I was very surprised with this activity because it is not anything we usually do and it offers a completely new and different dynamic, leaving total freedom for imagination and fantasy ... I love it!!

We started working on the seminar on some fairy characters and saying those characters who we would like to become if we had the chance. To continue, we were analyzing the different characteristics of some fairy tale characters to begin to familiarize us with the vocabulary and finally we started to do the activity: at first I was invaded by many questions about how I wanted to create my character, because I had many ideas about how to create it and I had many characters on my mind to build on them and it took me a long time to decide myself. First I started filling out some features of the character as I would like them to be, such as the context, appearance, personality, thoughts and feelings and goals. When I completed this list I had a clearer idea of ​​how I wanted my character to be, as well as their appearance and at the end I decided basing my character on one of my favorite movie characters: Conan.

I really think this is a great activity for doing with children in order to them can strengthen their imagination inventing a new character with total freedom, with the aim of improving their creativity with the help of the ICT in classroom, developing the digital competences. Also, I think is an activity that motivates to the students because they work in a funny way the content, while they develop their language skills and learn new and useful vocabulary.

In my opinion, I think it is very important to allow the children to develop their imagination in order to have an open mind and perform this type of activities frequently because they are very useful for developing his literacy competence.

 Alan      Alexander  Milne

Hello everybody, today I am going to talk you about my author who I had to do the presentation. I will write about the most important facts of his life and why is he so famous.

A.A. Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was a novelist, playwright and poet. He was from Hampstead, London, England. Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. For that reason, he wrote: a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934) and War with Honour (1940). In these articles he denounced the actions of war carried out by Nazis.

He started writing mystery and murder novels, but his books hadn’t enough success, so he started with the poems.

The origins of Winnie the Pooh began with the real bear of the brigade of Milne, in the army. This brigade had a bear as a pet called Winnie. And when the war finished Milner took his song to the London zoo to visit the bear. Then, Milner’s son, called his teddy bear “Winnie” because of the real bear. Milne began with Winnie the Pooh telling stories to his son Christopher. Winnie the Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest, England, because Milne and his son walked there.

All the characters were based on his son’s teddies:

Related with the famous book Winnie the Pooh, the first time, Pooh appeared in a poem called “Teddy bear”, because he wasn’t known as Pooh yet. One year later, Pooh born in the “London Evening News” of Christmas Eve and he appeared in a story called “The Wrong Sort of Bees”. Winnie the Pooh was published in 1926 and in the following years, Alan Alexander Milne, wrote other different stories about Pooh. When he died in 1956, Disney bought the rights of his stories to create Pooh cartoons and the family of A.A.Milne received 350.000.000 $. 

Reading map

Some days ago, the teacher told us we had to do an activity, which at first, it did not seem very useful, but now I find it very educational and fun. It consisted of creating a drawing by way of map which appeared the books we have read throughout our lives indicating those have been the most important.

This activity helped me to:

      - Remember the books that have influenced me.

      - Point out the kind of reading is the one I like.

      - Know schematizing my literature life.

      - Learn new vocabulary related to the subject of literature.

These kinds of activities could be applied to other subjects for making visual summaries of what has been studied in previous years, such as: murals for the subject Arts and posters with planets or Earth cycles for natural sciences.

Finally, I liked the idea of ​​the museum with all reading maps exposed for the people; in this way the whole class can see all books read by the partners and share opinions about them.

nursery rhymes

One of classroom activitiesthat I really like so much was the nursery rhyme, which is a series of short songs with rhythm that tell a story or make reference to any historical period.

An example of nursery rhyme song:

It has been argued that nursery rhymes set to music in a child´s development. Research also supports the assertion that music and rhyme increase a child´s ability in spatial reasoning, which leads to greater success in school in the subjects of mathematics and science.

Finally, I have learned that nursery rhymes is a very effective method for children to learn new vocabulary, while they sing and have great time, and also they acquire new knowledges about historical facts.

 It has been a fun activity!!

JOLLY PHONICS

The pronunciation of children is a very important factor to keep in mind from an early age and as teachers, we must start working on this topic with children from the first moment.

The method we are studying in this moment is:

Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. With actions for each of the 42 letter sounds, the multi-sensory method is very motivating for children and teachers, who can see their students achieve.

Jolly Phonics teachs five skills:

1. Learning the letter sounds.

2. Learning letter formation.

3. Blending. 

4. Identifying the sounds in words (segmenting).

5. Tricky words.

In summary, Jolly phonics is a method that works the pronunciation of children using simple songs for students, for they can  understand them without problems.

Jolly Phonics songs are formed by new sounds, images related to the new sounds, pictures that introduce vocabulary and gestures that represent sounds.

Finally, I have done this type of activity with children in my practicum period I must say that is an activity that students love because they have a great time while they learn new vocabulary and pronunciation.