The true story of Snowhite!

Which is the true story of Snowhite?

All of us know the Disney’s adaptation of this film, but… It really was like this?

The Grimm brothers version, tells the story in a violent way. In it, the queen tried to kill Snowhite three times, instead of only one.

In the first one, the queen tried to hang her with a tie, however, the dwarfs arrived on time and took the tie away. Within minutes, Snowhite regained her awareness.

The second time, the queen sold her a poisoned comb. The queen put it on Snowhite’ hair, and she fainted. Once again the dwarfs took out the poisoned comb from her hair. Snowhite had only a small injury, so she was saved.

The apple arrived in the third attempt. From here, the story is similar to the Disney’ one. The dwarfs thought Snowhite died, and they build a glass ferret to observe her until the prince arrived. When it happened, the prince fell completely in love with her, and he asked for permission to take her to his castle, and the dwarfs accepted. Thanks to the movement during the castle’s road, the piece of apple went out from her mouth, and Snowhite woke up. The prince wanted to marry with her, and she accepted; so the wedding’s setout started.

Meanwhile, the queen asked the magic mirror who was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. The mirror answered, that the most beautiful woman was the future queen, but without revealing  that the girl was Snowhite. When the queen listened to it, she got very angry, but she didn’t know who could be that woman.

Shortly after, the queen received a royal wedding’s invitation. In the ceremony, Snowhite recognize her, and she told the story to her husband. When the prince listened to it, he ordered to punish her. A pair of iron shoes was created for her. They were heated red hot, and the queen was ordered to danced with them until she died.

 

As we saw in class, Disney’ stories are adapted those versions to children. However, the Grimm’s versions are very violent. This is a good resource to work in class with the students. In this way, we are working the literature, and children learn the different versions of a tale they already know. Moreover, we can link the different stories with the alternative endings the student’s propose.

On the other hand, we can tell the Grimm’ versions to the students of the third cycle of primary, and they could promote and develop the communicative skills comparing the story they just learned with the one they already know. =)

Theatre in class =)

In the third seminar with Raquel, we did an activity which consisted on reading some sentences with the right intonation and enthusiasm. At the beginning we did it really bad, but trying it for some times, we improved.

The intonation we give to sentences when we are telling something is very important, not to be monotonous. We have to take into account this when we are acting or doing a piece of theatre.

In my opinion, working with children the intonation, and practicing a theatre, is an excellent resource we can use in order to promote their socialization and they are going to improve their reading skills using correctly the punctuation signals. Acting in front of their classmates will help them to lose their shame. Moreover, if they try and try to memorize a piece of text, they will develop their memory too.

In conclusion, it is a good way for children to enjoy and learn at the same time!

SONGS IN CLASS

What do you think about working in class with the lyrics of a song, and even with the song?

When we find a song that we like, we listen to it a lot of times, and without realizing we start to learn its lyrics; but, what happens when it is in a different language? In my case, I search the lyrics on the Internet and I use to read it while I am listening to the song.By reading the lyrics, I can understand better the song’s sense, and I am also improving my listening skills.

Nowadays, there exist a lot of songs that we can use in a class in order to improve the student’s listening. For example, in English class, we can select an appropriate song according to the level and to the cycle of the students and print the lyric with some missing gaps they will have to complete while they are listening to the song. I remember when I was at school and the teachers brought us a song to complete… those  were the most enjoyable lessons!

Moreover, we can take advantage that at the moment a lot of songs have been created with many different contents: mathematics, language…, and overall sciences. There are a lot of songs we can use to introduce and involve the children in the topic, and also to motivate them.

It is a very nice activity that I’m sure all of us remember fondly, all our future children will enjoy too! In my opinion, it is a way to connect with the children, and they could learn more easily the contents of the subject with a song, instead of using the book. It is a quick learning.

What do you think about it? =)