Take a film and travel ;)

Hello guys!

Do you like films? I believe you do J Nowadays it is a good kind of relax to watch a film and just enjoy a free time. But it is not the only advantage a film can have. What about film and teaching? Is there any connection? What do you think? I think there is a chance to connect both of these to make something unforgetable and also very useful.

Let´s see what kind of advantages we can find in film for the classes:

 - Film provides many opportunities for students to think about

 - Film developes students´ listening skills

 - Film can extend the learning beyond textbook

 -Film can broaden students´ knowledge

 -Film can broaden students´ vocabulary and cognition of syntactic structures

 -Film can show to students´ possitive attitude towards learning

 -Film can be motivation for students´ in many ways

 - Film can be basis of many pre- or after-activities in the class

And many many others.

Last week in the classes with Raquel we watched film and we were talking about films used in the classes and this made me think about it more and to search what internet thinks about it J And these are my founds:

       The key to success with a movie in the class as effective tool is to choose wisely and create lesson plans that involve the information learned in the movie.

       It is a fact of a teaching that there are some days when students just do not focus enough during the classes, usually before some holiday or maybe after, and this could be a good time to watch something on the topic you are teaching.

       Film can build the interest in the topic, if there is some topic we know students are not so much excited about, we can have their attention playing a movie to them.

       Film has an ability to teach crossing the curriculum and  to touch all areas of education.

But we are going to be English language teacher and that´s why is also important for us to see advantages while teaching english. I have found two interesting approaches and comments on them. First one is:

Short Sequence Approach 

v  This one is about a single-scene approach in which only one scene or segment from the entire film is utilized

v  Or selective approach featuring only a few scenes from different parts of the film

v  In comparison with the second approach, specialists suggest that 2-hour film has the problem of overload and length for less advanced learners

v  It is important to choose from a film a part according what we would like to practise, or focus on /e.g.: it can be about theme-based discussion, or we can try to practice listening strategies, maybe to show to students a grammar or pronunciation point, or to present cultural background/

On the other hand, there is:

Whole Film approach

Ø  an approach with which a feature film is shown in its entirely and studied as a whole

Ø  it usually takes one or two hours

Ø  this approach avoids any returning to a part of film, or video, any replaying or analyzing a small parts of film, or details

Ø  Shea (1995): "If I cut up the movie in five minute segments, focusing on the linguistic structure and the form of the language, the students might never have recognized the emotional force and narrative dynamic of the video as a story about important things in the human experience, aesthetic and ethical things like dreams, imagination, and commitment; things that drive language and ultimately stimulate students to learn it in the first place" – this is very important point in whole film approach

And what would you prefer? Whole film approach or short sequence approach?

In my opinion, the best would be to mix them J

Wishing a great start of a new week

          Lenka

TRAVELLING IN CINDERELLA STORIES

Hello again!

Yesterday was a great day, our teacher Raquel created for us opportunity to work with children through our workshop about fairytales. We were divided into 6 groups and every group was supposed to work with one fairytale. There was Snowhite, Aladin, Hercules or our CinderellaJ The name of the project was I can tell it! And the aim was to teach kids to talk about fairytales. We spend quite a lot of time, but it was worth it – children like the fairytales and I believe they learnt a lot.

To make them feel like in fairytale we decorated our classroom like in story, with Cinderella´s couch with mice and pumpkin, we used posters to help them to understand new vocabulary, and we dressed ourselves as characters from Cinderella.

Then we prepared for them activity with books we made, very nice colourful books in which children were supposed to order pictures from the Cinderella story according the parts of story. We helped them to understand the story and the vocabulary also, trying to use poster we used, or just using body language.

After organizing whole story we discussed with them where was the difference between the original story they know and these stories we prepared – different versions of story about Cinderella. We tried to make it as simple as possible for children at this age /7-8 years/ so we changed just simple points in the stories like instead of pumpkin there was apple as a coach, we had 4 stepsisters or Cinderella lost trainer J Children were smart and many of them found these out easily. Then because of the name of the project I can tell it we decided to ask children to retell the story about Cinderella, and we the small help they told us a short version of CinderellaJ I am really glad to have the experience like this and I recommend to everybody to create workshop like this, because for children it was very interesting and funny and for us – future teachers it was very useful experience. 

Thank you Raquel once moreJ

See ya soon

Lenka

Trip with Flip - my 1st own poetry book!

Hello my dear friends:)

how are you? I would like to show you today something very special! I made my own poetry book! :) A week ago Raquel gave us assignment to work on own poetry book and to create our final book on the page Storybird.com, which is a perfect page for creating stories!

check it: www.storybird.com

There is sooo many of beautiful paintings and drawings for children stories. You just need to choose an illustrator for your book and have a good idea for a story!

From my childhood I like adventurous stories, with mystical circumstances, and also detective ones. So I decided for a story like this. I created a main character - very cute elephant, who is trying to get to a place he is dreaming about. He heard many of interesting comments about this place and about the circle he is interested in the most. So we will see in the book how he travelled.

We were also supposed to use different kinds of poems:

a list poem

a riddle poem

a letter poem

and haiku.

A list poem gets its name from the fact that most of the poem is made up of a long list of things. List poems usually have a list in the middle, plus a few lines at the beginning and a few lines at the end.Two famous list poems are “Bleezer´s Ice Cream" by Jack Prelutsky and “Sick" by Shel Silverstein.

Bleezer's Ice Cream

 by Jack Prelutsky

I am Ebenezer Bleezer,

I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,

there are flavors in my freezer

you have never seen before,

twenty-eight divine creations

too delicious to resist,

why not do yourself a favor,

try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI

TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY

CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW

CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW

TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO

TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO

LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN

MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN

ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI

YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI

SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH

SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH

BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE

POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL

PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM

PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM

BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER

CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER

AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT

PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT

COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD

CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD

ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP

TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP

GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA

LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA

ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET

WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT

I am Ebenezer Bleezer,

I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,

taste a flavor from my freezer,

you will surely ask for more.

Sick

 by Shel Silverstein

"I cannot go to school today,"

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

"I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I'm going blind in my right eye.

My tonsils are as big as rocks,

I've counted sixteen chicken pox

And there's one more--that's seventeen,

And don't you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--

It might be instamatic flu.

I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,

I'm sure that my left leg is broke--

My hip hurts when I move my chin,

My belly button's caving in,

My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,

My 'pendix pains each time it rains.

My nose is cold, my toes are numb.

I have a sliver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,

I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth,

I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,

My temperature is one-o-eight.

My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,

There is a hole inside my ear.

I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?

What's that? What's that you say?

You say today is. . .Saturday?

G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

A riddle poem is a written poem that has a hidden subject or an agenda and a double meaning that one need to read and interpret. A riddle poem needs concentration and careful thinking when reading it, so as to get the hidden meaning properly.

I really like these ones:

I am a green ball that doesn’t bounce
After I’ve been popped from my green house.
I’m good to eat, but not with a fork;
I’d help teach the alphabet if I could talk.
What am I?

U can leave me your answer in a comment ;)

A letter poem is a poem in form of a letter. I enjoyed this letter poem, called LETTER TO MR.STOMACH:

Dear Mr. Stomach

I am writing to let you know you give me headache.

I have fed you in bulk,

But you never get full you are like 1 million water tank.

The ancestors craved and never satisfied theirs,

They went, still fighting for others,

Hoping more will fill you Mr Chunners,

In vein, it all came back to zeroes.

You are now disturbing me,

Hoping that I will comply to thee,

struggle and toil like a honey bee, 

For bread and butter for you sweetie. 

I am writing to let you know,

That you need to adhere to economic situations,

Mr. Money is on high demand 

So you need to cut the budget too.

I hope you will reply sooner,

As the time is quite shorter.

Or else you will be forced to get smaller 

In order to meet other financial endeavors.

And the last one was Haiku. Haiku is an unrhymed, syllabic form adapted from the Japanese: three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Because it is so brief, a haiku is necessarily imagistic, concrete and pithy, juxtaposing two images in a very few words to create a single crystalline idea. I really like haiku´s, and on this webpage: http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/haiku/there is many of them I consider as very good, hope you will like it also J

And finally, this is my poetry book!

http://storybird.com/books/trip-with-flip/?token=67cbxzwnr9

This page is from time to time not working, so I decided to upload pages of my book also here:

I hope you guys like it and I am glad for any comment you leave me! ;)

See ya soon

Travelling in Libraries ;)

Hello guys!

What do you think about libraries? Do you consider them as good for children? Or in this period of time, when everything you can get easily on the internet, they are not that much necessary? /I will appreciate every comment you will leave ;) / I think that every child should experience library, to find out how many of amazing books he or she can find there and there is also calm space for her or him to read, just to take a book and enjoy reading.

Day before yesterday we were presenting the homework our teacher Raquel gave us. We were supposed to create a library in the classroom, with the lowest budget and with the highest creative ideas. I really appreciated other ideas of my classmates to create really nice place to read for children, but I think me and my group including Nuria, Martina, Alberto, Eduardo and Rebeca did a really good job, which I would like to familiarize you with now.

Firstly, we created a space, where students can borrow books and also to read. The easiest way, we consider, is in the one corner of the class. Every time in the class there is a free desk, nobody is sitting at, and it can easily function as shelf. To low our budget, we would use chairs of children, they can easily bring from the place they are sitting on them in the class.

To keep library organized, we created baskets, where we organize different kinds of book in. It will depend

what the students will bring, or what our sources will get, but there can be a basket of Fairytales, basket of Picture books or basket of Adventurous stories. We also created basket of Best books, where the students will have best book of the week, which they will choose weekly.

Of course it is necessary to not forget about sources. Firstly we recommend to ask parents, where they have any books available for library, and we will make them sure at the end of the year they will get them back. So parents and students can bring from their homes lot of books. This is the same with teacher or even more teachers, who are effort to bring some books. As other important source we consider some business companies, business people or everybody who is willing to add a book to library for kids.

Very important thing in our library is Library checkout. The function of this checkout is to keep evidence about the books students have borrowed. Every student will have a card, where teacher will write the name of the book she or he borrowed, the same with returning books back to library, it is very easy way to keep the books organized.

We have created also a box, to which the students will put the name of the book they recommend, so from time to time we can choose most favourite book to read in the class.

There is many activities guys, you can do in the library, but here is a list the best ones according me:

Reader of the week

This competition will take place every week. Children are supposed to read books through the week and in the end of the week there will be an evaluation, where the reader of the week will be awarded in the „wall of the fame“. We can easily check how many books each student has read according our Library Checkout.

Best reader

This competition will be evaluated in the end of the year, when we will find the best reader of the year and our winner will be awarded with the book.

We recommend to ask students to keep records about what they have read in exercise book called „Reader´s diary“, where she or he can write short summary from the book or draw a picture about the book, but what more important, what they liked about the book – what can easily remind them what was the book about and they can use it later in their studies.

Market of the books

Children will be divided into few groups, where every group will create a stall in the market with different kinds of books. I would recommend to do this activity at the beginning while creating the library. They can compete between each other, in the way, half of a class will be in the lesson people walking in the market, when second half of students will be people trying to „sell“ their books-trying to persuade people to buy from they stole, because they have such a great books! Other class they can change positions and after this, students will choose winners of the market.

Special week can be activity focused on the parents, who would come to see kids in the class and they would show them their library or even they can play small theatre in the class for them from the book they will choose. Other type of activity with this name can take place every week, students will have every week special topic from the books they will talk about. They can, for example, read fairytales, comics or books full of riddles and we can easily have many activities connected with these topics.  

Reading for friends

This activity will be different. Students will take their favourite book and will go to streets to read for people they meet in there – their new friends. They can read for people waiting at the bus stop, they can go to shops, to dentist and they will just simply ask “may I read a few lines from my favourite book?”. We tried this activity in Slovakia and kids really love it, they had lot of fun.

I hope guys, you have found some inspiration for your classes and you will be successful in working in projects about libraries ! ;)

See ya soon

Lenka

In Pooh´s footsteps to North Pole

    Who wouldn´t know

               the yellow bear

          with red t-shirt

                        named Pooh ?

(if you think you know all about Winnie the Pooh, try to pass this small quiz:

www.quotev.com/quiz/3081910/How-much-do-you-know-about-Winnie-the-Pooh/  ;)

Last week in the class of Children´ s literature we were talking about this cute animal character and it came to my mind to research more about him, just to know where he came from, because I just knew it is an older one.

I did a small research and these are the interesting facts I have found:

-the first collection of stories  was  book WINNIE-THE-POOH from 1926

-all of the books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard

-Winnie the Pooh may seem like a weird name for a bear, but it was the name of Christopher Robin Milne’s real teddy bear and probably he found the inspiration in the London Zoo, where during the 1920s was a black bear named "Winnie"

-Most of the other characters were named after Christopher Robin’s toys as well. That is, except for Owl, Rabbit and Gopher

                                                                              

-You can see all of the real plushies that inspired the characters at the New York Public Library. With one exception –Christopher Robin lost his Roo plush in the thirties, so it is missing from the collection.

-You can also visit most of the locations from the stories. The Hundred Acre Wood, Roo’s Sandpit, Poohsticks Bridget and the rest are all fictionalized names of real places in the Ashdown Forrest in Sussex, England.

The first volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne was followed by the book The House at Pooh Corner, where the adventures of a teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh are connected with his friends: Piglet, a small toy pig, Eeyore,, a toy donkey; Owl, a live owl; and Rabbit, a live rabbit.

I liked the chapter number eight from the first book, ...IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN LEADS AN EXPOTITION TO THE NORTH POLE.

If you would be interested to read whole book, here is the page:

http://www.lib.ru/MILN/pooh.txt_with-big-pictures.html

I really loved also the video, if you don´t prefer to follow lines, right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EJAJCToXGg – part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXmiC6tvPZE – part 2

Directly to reading chapter 8 you can go here:

http://www.greeting-cards-4u.com/PooH/PooHBook/chap8.html

I hope you guys will enjoy it as much as me,

because at North Pole, there is not only a lot of snow! ;)

P.S.: And as many times in our classes, let´s sing together in the end, of course with Pooh ;) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbl8P4CA3BQ