Unforgettable lessons!

Hello! Today, in my last post in this blog I want to tell you about my experience exploring children’s literature in English! First of all our classes were very unusual for me and I liked them a lot!

It was the time when studying atmosphere was more relaxed and informal. In my opinion it will be perfect if I can represent this atmosphere in my future lessons! There are very original and interesting ways to organize the activities in class. We can’t just be at class we always need to be working! Of course it depends on the teacher, and in my opinion our teacher did it in the best way. For class it isn’t enough just to organize the work of students, there should be a lot of preparing before class.  During class we could think that everything is so easy for the teacher, but for it to seem easy, the teacher has to do a lot of work! It means that if we want to be professional in our work, we want children to sometimes believe that it seems easy, if we want to achieve a good result we need to do a lot of preparing before the class.

In order for our future literature lessons to be organized in an interesting, productive and original way, we need to use all the knowledge we have acquired from our class with Raquel!  For me it’s a way to learn literature from a new hand with different new activities! Of course for this group this subject was in English, but I think that we can use this learning strategies and methods of studying for literature in the native language too. I just mean, when I will return to Russia (when I’m not a bilingual teacher) I will try to use all of these activities!

We have learned a lot of useful information in this subject! There were topics about Nursery Rhymes, Storytelling, Fairytales, Reading Strategies, Poetry, Movies and others.

I’m thankful to our teacher for this perfect experience and great lessons!

We are watching films not only for enjoyment!

What do you think about watching films in the class? Is it good, necessary, important? Our last classes were about it. In our class we can use different videos on different topics with different goals.  Usually in my Uni (in Russia) we watched films after finishing the topic or when we have free hours. The activity after watching is usually about giving expression of the films, learn new vocabulary or discuss interesting facts. Of course it’s very good, but not perfectJ.  While watching the films in English we are involved in the actor’s speech, trying to understand, to remember new words and phrases. This is very important hearing the original speech with good pronunciation, especially for children, because they usually haven’t experience in English communication. 

I like the idea of our teacher (Raquel) – not just watching films but also analyzing specific things. For example in our class we were watching the film “Mulan”. It was a very productive viewing of the film. We had some questions in the beginning of the class about the film. Every group of students had to pay attention to the things which are connected to the question. For example: the role of women, the role of the family and etc. In my opinion it’s very good way to organize this activity. Every student has a specific question or topic to pay attention to different things while watching. After the film we had to organize a small group with the same questions and discuss them (like it was in our class). And in the end, like a reflection part, with one person from the group discuss all questions.

From my point of view this organization of the lesson is very good and successful. Every student is working, after watching, with the help of teacher’s questions, students can know the film from a new side; also thanks to the different questions students will pay attention to events or actions which they had not thought about before.

One important thing when we want to use films in our class – give students a purpose! Students need to study every moment in the class and we can’t spend time just for watching. So the teacher needs to give a purpose to students. It could be question to discuss, some finish activity when children need to use knowledge from the film or may be a theatre (children should pay attention to the behavior of the heroes, communication with other characters and etc.).

That is why I think that watching films in the class is very good. But teachers need to organize it very clearly and with a definite purpose. Thanks to our teacher for this new knowledge!

P.S. The opinion of readers can not coincide with the author’s opinion.

Activity for creativity

         Hello! Today I want to talk about interesting activities in our class. Our teacher Raquel discovered a very interesting way to help children developing their acting ability and improve language skills. In this post I will write about some of them.

The first one was very interesting and useful even for us. It will be perfect if we should have a stage for this activity, but also it can be the place in front of the class. At first, every person should think about a sentence which he/she want to say to the classmates. Next, one by one every student will go to the stage (or another place) and say his/her name and also what he/she want to say (ex. My name is Alex, and I like cats), after it the student gets a lot of applause. We can organize this activity to help children not to be shy; it’s a good way to remember some grammar or vocabulary. In my opinion, during the applause after speech students feel themselves very happy. It’s very good for their self confidence! Also I think we can organize this activity in the first days of classes when children need to know more about each other and may be remember the classmates’ names.

Another activity, Photo album, is not only useful but also funny. We need a group of 6-8 students. Two of them are friends who meet after the holidays. One person shows to friend photos in an album and describing it. The partner can ask some question and describe pictures too. Others students are “photos”! They need to show the picture which friends are describing and talking about. So, students need to understand each other for a successful result. From my point of view, children will like this activity! They can communicate; develop some acting skills and language. Teacher can give the students real photos to help them, and also we can give students some subjects for photo for better interpreting.

The last activity which I want to talk about today involves our own vocabulary with the students.  This work is for the whole group of students. One by one students need to say the one word which will be the story! It’s a little bit difficult, in my opinion. But the teacher can choose the topic to help students remember some vocabulary. This task is useful to improve and develop language skills, imagination and creativity.

I think we can use all these activities in our lessons in different interpretations. All of them are unusual, interesting and useful!  We can use them in the literature lessons like a part of the theater, to help children develop acting skills and have an experience of speeches in front of the class! What do you think about it?

P.S. The opinion of readers can not coincide with the author’s opinion. 

I can’t tell it!

    This week my classmates and I were the part of an interesting activity!  We created 6 workshops for children!  They were different fairy-tales - 3 little pigs, Aladdin, Hercules, Alice's adventures in Wonderland, Snow White and Cinderella.  We created everything we needed for our activity in the workshop so that it will be interesting for the children.

The fairy-tale of our group was Cinderella!  I think a lot of the girls liked this story, and I hope the boys too! :) For me all of our work was a little magic part of childhood!

 We created books for children with a story, but, there were some mistakes! The children needed to find these mistakes during the reading.  To help them we had a vocabulary list with the pictures (in common with mistakes).  After reading, children needed to compare pictures from the story with the text.  In my opinion this activity is not only interesting for children, but also very useful.  Students can remember the story, the heroes, repeat the vocabulary and learn something new.

For me it was the first experience working with Spanish children and it was very interesting!  I was surprised that some of the children had a very good level of English.  So, in my opinion bilingual schools are big advantages!  

My classmates and I were some of the heroes from our story!  This little theater was very interesting for children.  It’s very important not only to tell the story but also involve the heroes.

The atmosphere in our Uni was really magical! Everybody could meet the heroes from fairy-tales!  In my opinion children were exited of our workshops!

Another important moment for the children is always to have some assessment of their work, so it was a really good idea create medals from all workshops for children.  It was assessment, encouragement and motivation for working.  But, unfortunately some boys didn’t want to put on medals with the picture of Cinderella (because they don’t like princesses s=) )

At the end we had done good work!  It was interesting and useful for the children and for us too.  The most important thing was that children were laughing, they were happy with this activity and it was useful for them.  It means that we had achieved the goal of this work!  

P.S. The opinion of readers can not coincide with the author’s opinion. 

Books for looks

Hello!  Do you like reading?  I like it a lot!  Genres, authors and in different times!

Like primary school teachers we will acquaint children with literature and help them get oriented in the World of books.  A good beginning for it would be organizing a class library!  We can create everything we want!  The book shelves, organization of the books, and different types of activity.

The project of my team in our class is «Ready-to-read library».  We needn’t a high budget for it, it isn’t difficult to organize this library and for children it easy to use!  Every student can buy a book (each child will be assigned to a genre).  So we will have a lot of books for reading!  To help students get orientated in the variety of the books, we can use different boxes for different genres.  Pupils can use stickers for their opinion – just read, or read and love it! Creating a library with children is a good way to motivate them for reading!

There are different types of activities which we can use!  So it depends on our creativity and professional skills!

In our library we can chose one box of genres for poems!  It’s a very important part of the literature especially for children.  There are a lot of different poems for children which can help them discover something new, know the world, explain something and etc.

On our lessons we need to remember about features of children’s attention.  The 1-st class is about 6 minutes, and we should choose interesting and attractive ways to introduce children with the poems, and also we need to change the type of activity in one lesson.

 In our class with Raquel we had an interesting activity with poems!  At first we were organized in teams.  In the beginning every team had their own poem and questions for it. After answering the questions on the poem we had a next poem and etc.  So at the end every team had read all poems and answered all questions (in the perfect situation :)).  There were different poems with different questions, and sometimes it was a little difficult for us!  But I think that may be children could do it better, because they have different ways of thinking than adults!  I liked this activity!  It wasn’t boring; children can know the poems from a little game (that is really necessary in primary school especially in the first years when the game is the main type of activity for children).

In my opinion poems are a very important part of studying. We can use it not only in the Literature lessons, for example we can read a poem in Art lessons to create atmosphere. I can use the new type of activity which I have learned in our class in my lessons in my future job! Thanks to our teacher!

P.S. The opinion of readers can not coincide with the author’s opinion. 

The days of new activity

Our classes are very interesting!

    One of them was very unusual for me.  It was the first time that I took part in an activity like this.

    We created different stories and showed them with different guestures, Power Point presentations, objects and music.

    The stories of my classmates were a lot of fun, interesting and unusual. They were the stories about recycling, butterflies, boy and book, Greeks and other interesting ones.

    This type of activity helps children remember the story especially with gestures. The Power Point presentations raise the visualization level. So it’s very important for children.

    One group of classmates used different objects (toy horses, crowns, swords).  I liked it very much because it’s additional way of explaining the plot and remembering.

    It’s better when we use music and sounds!

When we use this type of activity in our lessons we can better remember the meanings of the words for our students. Maybe we can organize some games before the beginning of the story, so we can better know or remember the words.

    The next day of classes our teacher, Raquel, choose the best story (it was the story about recycling) and we organized a flashmob. A lot of surprised eyes were watching us! But it was very amusing! I think that now I remember this story because I remember the gestures! J

    We use different types of activities in our lessons every time!!! After our homework about reading maps (we had to create a map, where we showed our reading and write a description about it) there was an exposition of all reading maps.  It was a Reading Maps Museum! My classmates are so creative!!! There were maps with photos, book-shelves, printing maps and more and more interesting ones! But I needed to choose only 3, it was really difficult. My choice is…. No, it’s a secret, I won’t tell it :)))))

    So I think that our classes are the way for improve not only our knowledge but also our personality, creativity and develop our teaching skills!

    I hope that it isn’t the worst post… It’s only my opinion.

P.S. The opinion of readers can not coincide with the author’s opinion. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnci7PittOw&list=PL8ZwJOb_TamP9TJTuOOKMxCKQmcwqJ8D3&feature=player_detailpage

London Bridge (nursery rhymes) Russian version! :)