lunes, 28 de octubre de 2013

FROZEN FRAMES


Hello again my blogger friends!

In the last posts we saw practical activities to develop child’s literature through reading. However, have you ever wonder if there is any other way to promote it? Of course there is!

It is the case of Frozen Frames!!!

 It is a funny and creative activity where students learn literature through performing and exchanging oral opinions.

Frozen Frames consists on performing a scene of a story they know. It should be done in groups therefore students should interact with each other. The components of the group should establish a dialogue where they talk about the argument of the story they want to perform and also how are they going to do it. After, the final product could be shown to the rest of the class. Finally, the teacher could suggest that the other groups guess which is the story that their partners are performing.


Here you have clear examples of Frozen Frames. Pay special attention and let’s see if you could guess which story refers to each photo!






How was it? Did you guess all the stories?

As you could see, Frozen Frames could be a useful tool where they could develop their creativity and communicative skills. Moreover, it should be done in groups therefore socializing is also a big component in this activity. Also, we should not forget that frozen frames is a good educational application to activate children’s previous knowledge because they are putting into practice their own ideas.
Furthermore, you should know that it has a simple application because it does not require any special material.


If you want to put into practice this funny activity you could follow the following steps, at the same time you will also find the advantages of using this activity:

  •  Make groups of 4-5 people and tell them that they have 5 minutes to choose one known story, for example one fairy tale

In this step, they are learning how to organize themselves. Moreover, students are also developing their communicative skills. It happens because all of them have to give strong reasons about why choosing the story they like.
  •  Once they have chosen one story, they should talk about its plot

One more time students are using their communicative and social skills. In this case, all together should contribute to build the whole story and summarize it.

  •  Students should choose one relevant moment of the story and try to perform it

This time students should agree to choose a specific moment of the story and try to find a creative way to perform it.
  •    Show the final result to the rest of the class

During this last step, students are remembering their previous knowledge and trying to find the connection with the action shown. 



Application in a Bilingual context

As it is mentioned before, frozen Frames is a really visual activity where students show their knowledge using their own body resources. These strong reasons make us think that it could be also used in a Bilingual Context. Many educational experts agree with the idea that the content should be shown in different perspectives to catch the attention of all our students, for instance reading, using schemas, writing and also observing pictures, videos or FROZEN FRAMES.

How to use it? It is simple you must choose a topic learnt in class, for example The five senses or The water cycle. Students should review their knowledge and try to represent it in front of the class. Here you have an example of The five senses:



As it shows, frozen frames is a good educational activity that help students to acquire or remember the main content of a story or a subject topic. Moreover, it is simple and funny so why don’t we use it?

Would you like to share with me some other good educational applications using Frozen Frames?



Thank you for reading me! See you in the next post! 


Image and video hosting by TinyPic

viernes, 18 de octubre de 2013

CREATING STORIES


THE THREE RECYCLING BINS!

Hello my blogger friends!

I am sure that sometimes you have thought that it is very difficult to find a story that fits with the topic you want to talk about. Nonetheless, have you ever tried to create your own one?

  • MODEL

Dominic Streames suggested a good practical way to do it. He explained this model in a Tesol- Spain conference in Bilbao 2012. He proposed a narrative structure that must be follow in all the stories created. Moreover, he explained that is important that the teacher always uses the same gestures. In this way, students will have more facilities to understand the content of the tale. According to the expert Dominic Streames it is not enough because students also need visual scaffolding. Due to this fact is also necessary to create several pictures that help the student to follow the story.

Here you have a clear example of creating a tale following Dominic Streames model. It is called The Big tree and the Three Recycling Bins. If you pay special attention to the sequence and structure of the tale you will notice that it is easy to change. 


  • APPLICATION IN A BILINGUAL CONTEXT
As we already know, if we want to attract children’s attention we must propose a motivating activity, such as a storytelling. According to the curriculum Royal Decree 1513/2006 from 7th December the students of the First Cycle of Primary Education start to work about recycling, therefore the story could be used to introduce the topic and activate students’ previous knowledge.





Through this story students will...

 ü  …Recognize how recycling bins are

“We are three, we recycle and we are hungry”

Physical appearance looking at the story pictures
 ü  …Identify their function

“We will eat Mr. Rubbish (…)
 So the Three Recycling Bins opened their lids and ate Mr. Rubbish. 
They ate, and ate, and ate and finally the Three Recycling Bins won Mr. Rubbish”

Paying attention to the pictures, they will see that each bin take a different type of material

 ü  …See that recycling helps us to keep clean our cities

“Oh no!” said the big and strong tree/
Don’t worry” said the Three Recycling Bins we will eat Mr. Rubbish”

 ü  …Recognize that they should not dirty their cities 

“I am Mr. Rubbish and I will destroy your park”



Moreover, we should not forget that with this story we are not only working  science contents because we are also helping to produce language! Storytelling provides contexts for talking, listening, reading and writing


As you could see there are plenty of advantages that encourages us to create our own tales. That is why I recommend all the teachers to use them in class. Not only the student will acquire new curricular and language contents, the teacher will also learn how to adjust the content and the language according to their students’ needs! 





Image and video hosting by TinyPic