Quite often we are able to use special days,
celebrations, the change of the season, etc. as a topic to link a sequence of
activities. The fact that we are talking about something that is happening here
and now makes it motivating and relevant to the children.
In our class we did several activities related to autumn such as:
Autumn rhymes
Autumn acrostic
poems
I must say I've never particularly enjoy this kind of activity. I find them as boring as I did as a child. However, there are several authors, such as Gianni Rodari, that recommend this kind of activity to promote creativity. This is a selection of what was written in class.
Halloween activity
The last one is the one I really liked here are a few tips to organize it:
1-Introduction and motivation:
Halloween
e-card.
In the following link you will find an amazing Halloween e-card. In addition, you here it is a compilation of pages that gives you tips both for digital and classic Halloween cards for children.
Pumpkins, candles and further atrezzo.
This kind of elements help you to create expectation. Use them for introduction and motivation and use them to link with the next activity by means of lighting them and asking for a spell.
You can create other elements to provide background such as magic potions (with soda powder, vinegar, a bit of soap and cupcakes colourant) which as you will see later on in the video can be used for amazing tricks that can be related with your science class.
2-Writing spells
Children have to write their
spells and hung them on a Poplet wall, for example:
Frog leg and owl feathers or
Wolf fang and skin of snakes
Cast a spell over this `potion
That will charm you anyway.
Later on you can put them all together like we did here.
3-Reading the spells aloud around the candles
while we watch the potions.
This is a good way to work things as stress, rhythm and other phonetic aspects of the language while doing something fun. The teacher might start reading aloud so the children are presented with a quality input to replicate and later on different groups or individual students will recite their own spells as well as their mates.
At the same time this works really well as a context for the following activities.
This is a good way to work things as stress, rhythm and other phonetic aspects of the language while doing something fun. The teacher might start reading aloud so the children are presented with a quality input to replicate and later on different groups or individual students will recite their own spells as well as their mates.
At the same time this works really well as a context for the following activities.
4- We finish up with the first chapter of Meg and Mog which is available as a normal video or with
texts to read.
There are many pre and post activities related to Meg and Mog available. Here it is what we prepared for the 4th grade children of La Salle.
MEG AND MOG
Ø
Activity
1: Brainstorming.
What do you know about witches?
1.
We
ask the children to say aloud words that they know about witches.
2.
We
draw a table on the blackboard and we organize the words in groups.
WITCH’S THINGS
|
WITCH’S PETS
|
WITCH’S BODY
|
WITCH’S CLOTHES
|
Cauldron
|
Frog
|
Wart
|
Hat
|
Broom
|
bat
|
3.
We
teach them to build a mind map with it by using a popplet.
Ø Activity 2: Introducing the characters.
We show the children the following flashcards and we ask them questions
about them.
JESS
|
TESS
|
CRESS
|
OWL
|
BESS
|
MEG
|
CAT
|
~
What is this? Is
it an animal? Is it a witch?
~
Is it a cat? Is
it an owl?
~
Is she Jess,
Tess, Cress, Bess or Meg?
~
Has she got a
frog? Has she got a spider? Has she got…?
Activity 3: Guess who.
1.
With
the questions we organize a ‘Guess who’ game in groups with the information
about the witches. It has the only purpose of teaching them how to play. To do
that we ask one group to leave the class. We choose one of the flashcards. When
the pupils come back into the class they have to make questions to guess the
flashcard that we are talking about.
2.
Once
they’ve learned how to play we start a new game using new questions and with
the pupils in the class
What’s she wearing?
Is she tall/ short?
Has she got long/short/ curly/straight hair?
Activity 4: Reading. 
Video.
Now, in small groups the children have to take the
video home and record their voices as if they were the characters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_9JEHTZZs
Activity 5: A cauldron
party.
In a circle,
each student will have to say what she/ he is going to put in into the
cauldron.
‘As I’ve been
invited to this cauldron party, I’ve brought this_____ in case we get hungry
hahaha’ (flashcards with strange animals)
Activity 6: Role play.
There is a witch
in the village and she’s putting spells on the village people. We need to catch
the witch together before she puts everybody under her spell.
Characters: A director (the teacher), a witch and the rest are
the villagers.
Rules of
the game: We sit on a
circle and we deal a card to each player, one of the cards is the witch and the
rest are the villagers.
This is an amazing dynamic to practice
conversation. It allows children to speak to each other, as they have to decide
who the witch is in order to try and execute it.
Some of the structures they can practise
are:
‘I think that she is the witch because’... ‘She
spoke first’... ‘she didn’t speak...
‘She is the witch because’... ‘she moved’... ‘she
is silent’..
Once everyone has their card the
director (or teacher) will ask everybody to go to sleep, so everyone will look
down. Subsequently, the director will call the witch to wake up, put a spell on
a villager (by means of pointing or looking to its victim), and get back to
sleep. Then the villagers will wake up and the director will inform the victim
of his or her condition. Immediately after, people will speak against each
other for a few minutes- For instance Pedro may say: ‘I think that Manolo is
the witch because I saw him moving a little when the witch was cursing’. And
Pedro might reply: ‘I think the wolf is Pedro because he accused me first’.
After a while there will be a poll. Whoever is voted witch will be executed
(loses the game), and therefore will turn his or her card facing up. If it is
the witch (the real one,) the round is over and we shall assign new roles. If
the person chosen is a villager, the whole process will start again.
We can adapt the background of the
dynamic to whatever text we are working with. The characters could be animals,
villagers, courtier, or whatever suits us; in the same manner the witch could
be any antagonist that appears in our story.
And this is the video of what we finally did.
Many of my classmates did their activities base on Meg and Mog for different grades within the same school. Here there are a few videos on what they did.
I particularly like the one my mates did for nursery school children because despite having too far too many children for the activity they are performing, they successfully maintain their attention at all times while they manage to make them say the names of many ingredients.
On the other hand I must say I didn't like that much the final activity they did based on this one as I did not really grasped what the whole point was, besides making a brownie. In this sense, I have observed that too often (not this particular group, I'm talking in general) the input that we are offering the children is wrong (e.g. talking about a cooking receipt instead of a recipe) and that makes me wonder what is the use then. I mean that I might be doing and amusing activity in which the children are going to relate certain concepts with its representation in English verbal language through and input that we are providing. But if the input is not correct, the children are learning something wrong and we might be creating problems for the future.
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