Analyzing Mulan

Hi again!

Today I want to talk about the film we saw the other day in class, Mulan. I think it is very interesting because there are many things to analyze.

As we know the main topic of this film is the transformation of Mulan who have to pass by a guy to save her father from going to the war. She appears as a brave girl, considering even be sanctioned by the society.

This film shows the male characters clearly represent a sexist stereotype, exhibiting the "manly behavior “: dirty, rude, etc. ., which will have to assimilate Mulan to be admitted in the group.

In addition in the film are some accepted social relations: masculinity symbolizes the defense of a country or the submission that women have to show to men. Also, although it film does not seem the typical fairy tale, at the end the prince appears to search for "his princess" so it is not so different than the rest of the Disney films.

About the Mulan personality, it is difficult to find a Disney princess like her. She is a woman who has to become into a man to defense her family because it is impossible do that with a woman's figure. Mulan appears as a revolutionary princess, who accepts the possible sanction for betraying the family and social principles. She fights for the honor of his family, but not so reserved for women, but not as a woman but as a man.

Mulan enumerate some words like elegant and refined, while memorized them to become into a perfect wife. The fact that she has to learn them shows that no one is born as well as for being woman.

In conclusion, the film exposes and criticizes sexist behavior where the woman is in a subordinate position, but at the same time shows aspects that corresponds to the typical Disney princesses’ stories. I think that could be positive to use it in Primary and then analyze with the students these things as we did in class.

I hope your comments and opinions! Bye! =)

ENJOY WITH...

Hi guys!

Today I have been thinking about ideas for the creation of my poems and I have come to the conclusion that my post will be about this topic because I think there are many things that we must consider as future teachers about the use of poetry in class.

As Raquel showed in class, children often see poetry as something hard and boring, but we can change this vision. To get that all students have access to the world of poetry not see it as boring, dense or incomprehensible, the poems should be selected properly by the teacher. 

He or she has to get the children do not see literature as a problem but as an entertainment, especially in the first cycle of Primary Education, when they know poetry for the first time. Because of that in this cycle the poems should be short and not too difficult to understand for a child of seven years. We also have to select poems with resources such as repetition for example and we should enhance the rhythm.

However in the second and third cycles, I think the poems should be getting longer and abstract in order to the students can improve their skills slowly.

In addition we should not forget that student motivation is one of the basic principles that help them to develop a significant learning and to relate what they have learned with their prior knowledge so we have to present poetry as an attractive topic and capture their attention from the first moment.

To conclude I want to add that we can use poetry in all the subjects. Here you have an example of a poem to introduce the life of the butterfly in Natural Sciences:

Caterpillar

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

     -Christina Rossetti-

I hope that you are agree with me!
See you soon!=)

OUR "Ready To Read" LABRARY!

Hello everyone!

Today I want to talk about our library project because I am very excited with the result and I would love to make it real in the future.

As you have seen in class it consists on a mobile library so it can be moved to all the places of the school. It has boxes covered with different color papers and these boxes contain the books. Each color represents one genre. I think it is essential because in this way the students can choose more easily the type of book they want to read.

The library will also have one cupboard where children can put their opinions about the book they already have read on a paper with the same color as the genre of this book. In this way the students can read their partners opinions and have an idea about what they think about some book.

The final budget on our project is about 133€ so I think it is not too much money and the children will enjoy it very much.In the budget there are not the books because we would ask to the children to buy one different book each one and bring it to the school. And also we would ask older children from the school to donate their books from when they were younger. Moreover publishers can give us some books if the school has bought their textbooks for many years.

As we have shown you in class, we have designed many activities based on this library and the best one for me is the mail box. It consists on that students from 2nd course will write on the template which book they will like to read and students from 1st course will write on another template which book they will like to hear from an older student. In this way, once a month the teacher will open the mailbox and choose (from a raffle) those children that picked the same book, a couple to go together during the break and read the book.

I think that this is a good way to motivate them to use the library and to read more books in order to achieve a higher fluency in their reading.

I hope that you like our idea and I want to know your opinions!

Thanks!=)

LEARNING A NEW READING STRATEGY

Hi again!
Today I want to show you the reading strategy which my group and I analyze the other day in class.

It is called “The four square retelling” and here you have the video where you can see how a teacher uses this strategy with their students in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9dq5rfPRSc&list=PL5178787DB725559D&index=10

 

As you can see, this strategy allows that children can organize the main ideas of a text or a chapter that they or their teacher have read before. Through the Four Square chart which is organized by the succession of the main actions (with these words: First, Then, Next, Finally) they can continue the sentences and build the story summary.

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Then they have to draw each scene. I love this part because I think it is an interesting way to know how they are imaging the action, the characters and the spaces. Moreover it is perfect to motivate them because most of the children like to draw and paint.

 I think that a good way to use this strategy in class would be do it in two sessions. In the second session students could cut their drawings and interchanged them with their partners. Then they could organize the actions and see the differences with the drawings they have done.

I say this because I think one of the best things about reading is everyone imagine things differently when is reading the same book. Maybe it describes perfectly some character or some landscape but I think that none would imagine it exactly equal. This is the main point that differentiates reading of cinema or theater so I think it is important to give them the opportunity to discover how special it can be read.

Furthermore this strategy is designed for children who are in the first cycle of Primary Education so it is a good way to structure the events and reinforce their sense. I think that it can help them to understand and encourage the reading of other texts or books.

I hope you like this strategy and help you as future teachers! :)

And the best author is.....Alan Alexander Milne!!!

Hi again guys!

Yes, I know. He was not the author who won our selection, but for me he is still the best because of one simple reason: he is the author of Winnie the Pooh!! Today I will speak about him and his story because I found it really interesting y I think he deserves to have a post in my blog.   

First of all we need to know him a little bit, to understand his story. Milne born in 1882 and died in 1956. He was from London, and he was at the same time novelist, playwright and poet but in the War I he joined the British Army and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Because of that he wrote some books about war like for example, A denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934) and War with Honour (1940). These books had not enough success and he tried to do poems, but neither were successful. The writings really made ​​him famous were the stories of Winnie the Pooh.

It all started when he was in the army. The brigade had a real bear as a pet called Winnie. When the war finished Milner decided to take his son to the zoo to visit the bear. The child liked the bear so much that he decided to call his old teddy bear Winnie. Milne began to tell him stories based on his stuffed animals and the bear was the main character in these stories.

These are his child's stuffed animals, which are still preserved:

Another interesting fact was that these Winnie the Pooh stories took place in Ashdown Forest in England, where Milne and his soon usually walked. He wrote these stories but the first one was a poem called Teddy bear written when Milne had not called him Pooh yet. Then the bear appeared in the “London Evening News” in a story called “The wrong sort of bees” and from this moment he began to have success.

When he died, Disney bought the rights of his stories to create Pooh cartoons.  Nowadays it is one of the most known children's series in the world. Because of that the A.A. Milne’s family received 350.000.000 $!!!

For me it is a really amazing story and I learned a lot doing this activity. I never thought that Winnie the Pooh is a real bear!!! 

Here you can enjoy remembering a chapter of these cartoons we saw when we were kids and that exist thanks to this great author!!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uiXSwWaicY

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION:

Hi guys!

In the first post of my blog I wanted to discuss one topic that we saw in class and caught my attention and somehow I found it interesting to develop.
One of the slides prepared by Raquel said that children can bubble any sound, which means that as they grow they eliminate these sounds to get just with the sounds used by their mother tongue. This is quite amazing and I was researching about this topic. 

I have found that this has been one of the issues that caused more controversy throughout the history. There are different theories about this fact:

There were many psychologists who gave an opinion on this. Not everyone had so clear this idea of children born with innate language capabilities and able to bubble any sound. Below you have a list of different psychologists and a short summary of the different theories about this in chronological order:

BEHAVIORAL APPROACH: SKINNER. He did not believe in the innate capacity. He considered the language development depends on the external stimulus. He said that the language are responses that children learn by Operant Conditioning.

NATIVIST APPROACH: CHOMSKY. Chomsky thought that language is generated from innate structures, and his theory is known as “generative grammar” 
Chomsky presented two main ideas: 

    •    Autonomy:  The language development is independent of other functions and other developmental processes. 

          •    Nativism: Chomsky said the language was something innate in all of us because it is something we learn too fast and with too little aids.


COGNITIVE APPROACH: Piaget.
His thoughts were like Chomsky´s but adding a constructivist perspective. He believed that the child needs to experience basic ideas to develop language. He said that the language is equivalent to the intelligence.
                                         

States that language influences entirely on the intelligence of every person because it is the means of acquiring information and transmit information, therefore culture.


SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH: VYGOTSKY
Vygotsky said that language influences entirely on the intelligence of every person because it is the vehicle of acquiring and transmit information and knowledge.

PRAGMATIC APPROACH: Bruner
He said the child acquires language through the magnificent access he has to it, because the language acquisition is socially considered the most important thing. He called ‘external development amplifiers’ to people that allow the child has this great situation of learning, considering the family as the most important.
                                                                                                        

As you can see each of these theories has a different point of view about what is language and how we learn it. 

To finish, I have some questions for you:
What do you think about this? Which of these theories do you think more accurate? Which less? Why?