29th March – performance of our school experiences

One week ago the teacher gave us the task to create a performance of our school experiences. For this task, our group joined together with two other groups.

First, we did a brainstorming in a big circle. Fast we got the idea to present our school experiences in different scenes within the daily life of the primary school.

We got more and more ideas which scenes we could play in our performance. We thought about our good memories and also our bad ones we had at primary school. That is how we decided what we wanted to show and what we wanted to express with it.

Each group created one or two scenes, like the scene where Sofia had her birthday or where we showed the punishment in the physical education class. Furthermore, each group thought up a dialog for each scene.

After the normal class, we met and created a big school bus and made a cow and a pig for the different scenes. We paid attention to the details, like having a hat for the ending scene or a crown for the birthday student. Each of us got a role in the scenes and we learned our text.

On Tuesday we met again to practice our theater and to look if something was missing or not proceed as we imagined it.

For Wednesday we were well studied. Before and while the performance we had a lot of fun!

First, when I heard the task, that we have to do a performance of our school experiences, I though it is a not really necessary or it would just take too much time to practice.
But after all, I am glad to make this experience. 

While we were thinking of the big group about what we wanted to express our ideas and while we created altogether the materials for every scene, it brought us all closer together.

I am glad to be in this class because my classmates are very helpful, thoughtful and funny.

After this performance, I felt more included into the whole class. This feeling and experience you could only have while working together as a group. You work as a team, learn how to share exercises and have fun together.

Can a tree express feelings?

The second day of class, a normal day as other in the faculty, we sat in our places and waited for the teachers. But, how was it develop?

The first thing that they request us was to leave all that we were doing, we must stop for a moment, and we only have to take a piece of paper, a pen, and an overcoat, in case that we were cold. And everyone asked: Where we are going? Are we going out of class?, Do we have class? The first thing that they request us was to leave all that we were doing, we must stop and everyone asked: Where we are going? Are we going out of class?, Do we have class?

We went to the playground of the faculty, and we sit around of a big tree that was in the middle. They told us to represent what that tree transmits us, by drawing, writing, how we wanted. The main idea was to express what it made feel us. In addition, they allowed that we get close, feel, touch the tree…

Once the ten minutes finished, we returned to the class and we distributed the chairs in a circle form because it was a good way to see all classmates and allow us to discuss better together. We began by expressing ourselves and we also started to know the different perspectives that the same tree could provide to each person. Some points of views were similar, however, the majority were different. Due to this, the ideas, feelings, and opinions connected with the tree gave a subjective perspective, so different to what we see in this tree with “objective perspective”.

 And, regarding the question that we did at the beginning: “Do we have class?”. Yes, of course, we did an amazing and relaxing class, where we got mutually listen, knowing other ideas, learning to respect these ideas and to be more tolerant, developing new concepts, etc.

The father's day

The 19th of March is the father's day, and for this reason, practically in all school, teachers prepare something in order to children did and they can gift to their fathers, but really we have to ask what would be the better option to tackle this situation. We have to keep in mind that there are different families, so there are children without the father for different circumstances or with two fathers. Then teachers have to assure yourselves to prepare this activity in the better way.

We want to share one link where you can see different perspectives to carry out the father's day and also, two videos.

In these videos we can see what is the emotional importance that has the father of their children, also, we can extract some values and different point of view of the father's day.

Link: http://www.bekiapadres.com/articulos/celebrar-dia-padre-sin-papa

                                    

                                    

School Experiences - Presentation

One day, the teacher told us to write down about our school experience (teachers, personal reflections, feelings...) and then, we put all of them in common, by noting down all the similarities and differences in order to extract several themes and organize them into categories.

We did a huge list because our experiences were really different, due to two main facts: our type of school (public, private and publicly supported by the state) and the differences between our two Erasmus students, Lena and Heidi (from Germany and Finland) and the other Spanish experiences. There were some similarities too!

Therefore, after doing a selection of all the contents, we established seven categories (some of them with subcategories) and we represented them in a cardboard to present it to the rest of the class.

We draw the head of a girl with our age, who is thinking and remembering her school experience, that’s why from her brain leaves some bubbles with the categories. We also added a circle divided into four parts according to our four stages at school: preschool, primary, secondary and bachelorette. Each stage had a different colour and we assigned this colour to the element that was most relevant at this stage. For instance: if in preschool (purple), the celebration of the Carnival was more relevant and we put the colour purple next to it.

The first category was Type of school, as we have said, we found the three kinds of our experiences: public, private and publicly supported by the state. This category will influence the rest of them because each school won’t manage in the same way.

The next one is Free time, it is very important because along with all our school experience we spent a lot of free time. At least, we had thirty minutes each day. And, what did we do at this time? Several activities! Sport, playground games, walk, gossips…

The third category is the biggest one. It is the Methodology and it embarks many things that determine the way of transmitting the knowledge. The first subcategory is the punishment because all of us remember when a student had a bad behaviour and the teacher punished him. The next one is the evaluation that could be quantitative and qualitative. The third one is the different ways to teach and learn and here we can find lots of things: exams, learning by heart, traditional methods, teamwork, theoretical/practical activities, etc. The last one is the class management: the decoration was important in preschool, for example at Christmas time;  also the distribution of the tables in a U shape in order to work in a more communicative way, etc.

The next category is the Relationships and we distinguish between three types. Relationships between teachers and parents, which will affect the child; between teachers and students (there will be teachers that were important in our lives and others that we forget easily); and between students. In this one we can see the competitiveness, the “enemies” in other classes (for instance, the fights between the class A and the class B) and also many friends and friends from other countries.

The fifth category is the Celebrations, because in our region we have lots of them, such as Carnivals, Andalusia’s day, Peace’s Day, Holy Week…Our experiences were full of activities according to each event. For example, it is traditional that in the Andalusia’s day, all the schools eat the typical “mollete” with oil and did dances and performances.  We have also included in this category the trips we did to several places: museums, cinema, other cities, which were important to learn in a different way.

The next one is the Changes because they are important in our experiences. When we pass from Primary to Secondary, usually we have to leave our school and went to another building (High School) with an organization, classrooms, teachers, etc. completely different. Therefore, the student has to adapt himself to this new school and with this change, the child could suffer so it is important to control it. Another important change is the election between languages or sciences when we were at secondary education because it will determine the future studies.
As a consequence of this changes, we can find the last category, which is the Student’s feelings (stress, boring/funny moments, nervous…). All of them could influence the student’s school experience.

We hope you like this organization!

Welcome!

Hi, everyone! Welcome to our blog!🙋

We are a group of students from the University of Malaga, concretely at the Primary Education degree. We have created this blog to share with you all the activities and ideas, showing at every moment the passion that we feel for this profession.💗

 We hope you like everything we share. Do not worry, because there will be a variety of content! All of them focused or with a perspective on education. 📚

Soon you will know the name of the group. Firstly, we will give you some clues, it is related to Disney production and it is set there by the time of the Vikings...do you know who it is?😏      

Do not hesitate to leave your comments in the box below! We would like to know what our readers think, share with us your ideas or experiences! 😉

Why do we call us "Brave"?

The name chosen to call our group is Brave. It is the name of a film produced by Walts Disney and was performed in 2012. Now, you will wonder why we have chosen this denomination. We find two reasons.

 On the one hand, we have paid attention to the main character of this film. It is a Princess named Merida who breaks with a sacred tradition: marry a Prince who is chosen by her father carefully. This Princess wants to make her own life. This plot supposes a change of the woman´s role that the child films usually transmit. If we pay attention, these films appear plenty of stereotypes. Women have been characters dedicated to domestic chores, characters who are waiting that appear that handsome Prince who make them happy and the one that they must love, etc. In other words, women do not live for themselves, but for a man. However, in this film, we begin to see a woman who has war skills, who wants to fight in order to achieve her goals, who wants to be independent and makes her own decisions. With the name Brave bound to the film, we want to express our wish of reaching an equal society in which the woman´s role does not bound to the man. As future teachers, we would like to develop teaching methods which reinforce these values in each new generation, and, as a consequence, this story stops to be strange and will be seen natural and common by children.

 On the other hand, we have based on the suitable meaning of the word. We use this world to refer to that person who presents huge bravery in the life; independently of the situation he is facing: difficult, simple, serious… as regards this person that overtakes his fears to continue. From our point of view, doubtlessly, the teacher should be brave.The life is a stranger and unknown way where, first of all, we have to be valiant and confront issues from the different perspectives, in order to get our objectives. In fact, all the ones who start with the adventure of the difficult task of teaching, is really brave, considering that there are thousand of situations where they come face to face: conflicts between students, controversies with parents, obstacles imposed by the management of the school, etc. However anyone has to surrender because the constancy and effort will allow surpass obstacles and reach the proposed target, the objectives will search in students to be critical and self-sufficient. We have to be brave to renovate education and schools. 

(Brave, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, 2012)