Last
Wednesday we had our first practical lesson of “Exploring Children’s Literature
in English”. We were exhausted after a
morning full of classes, but suddenly everything changed… We were victims of a magic
spell and, suddenly, we moved backwards to our early childhood and a marvelous
feeling involved us. The magic spell was made by warming-up bounding with familiar
thoughts and a little of new
knowledge, in order to be able to adapt, create and produce the final spell,
NURSERY RHYMES.
One of the
most important reasons why we moved backwards so easily was that Raquel
motivated us to be active and participative, and she made the topic close to
us. First, she told us to think if we knew what “Nursery Rhymes” were, and if
we could remember any from our childhood. Little by little, we went deeper into
the proposed topic, listening typical nursery rhymes and doing different
activities and exercises about it. In the last part of the lesson, we learnt different
techniques to work with Nursery Rhymes and we showed them in a performance. In
groups of 5 or 6 people, we chose one of the Nursery Rhymes worked in class,
and we sang them twice in front of the rest of the class.
Nursery Rhymes
were the approach to new language since we were only 3 years old, and consequently
very important to us, although we didn´t understand what the song was about.
Nevertheless, that strange lyrics and hard and old vocabulary, today makes more
sense because Nursery Rhymes were not originally created to entertain children but
to hide political subversive messages. Nursery
Rhymes are very useful for every year of Primary Education, if we adapt the
contents and the activities to the level of each class, and can be done both at
the beginning of the class, as warming-up, and at the end of the class. The
students learn new vocabulary, practice pronunciation and improve fluency while
learning about English culture, historical events, poems and typical places,
such as in “LONDON BRIDGE”. The sentences in the Nursery Rhymes are simple and
repetitive so are easier to learn and remember. These activities can highly
motivate pupils because they have an active role during the lesson.
In our
opinion, the development of the class has been wonderful. We have learnt a lot
of new things about the topic and how to apply it as future teachers in the
classroom. Also, we have realized the steps that the teacher has followed in
order to give us the lesson, in which scaffolding was everywhere.
In our Nursery
Rhyme, “London Bridge is falling down”, we have used different types of Choral
Speaking techniques, such as ANTIPHON and CUMULATIVE. In the video attached to
this post we show the little performance that we made in class. Could you help
us to find how we have introduced those techniques? What do you think about the activities done in
class? What do you think about the
methodology Raquel followed? Would you do it in another way? Which types of
Choral Speaking techniques have you used and why have you chosen
them? What do you think about Nursery Rhymes? Do you think you will use this
tool when you become a teacher one day? Did you sing Nursery Rhymes when you
were younger?
We would be very happy if you want to share
your thoughts with us!
(Noelia Barroso, Guiomar Caballero, Clara Vilches, Sandra Anaya, Sara Blanco, Leticia de la Serna)
