The three states of water

Last week we talked how we can make the subjects more interesting and that children do not get bored, but motivated, and that their knowledge must be significant and long term. We remind the class with Manel and how children can use stop motion or comic to represent something concrete such as the three states of water. To test that is more than possible, we did a simulation, which children can make much better.

Never too late!

Star's reflexion about Manel's visit.

Hello. I'm Paloma and I have been the star during this week. My task is to summarise what we did on Monday with Manel but as the journalist and the analyst have done something similar yet I will talk about it from my point of view. 

When Linda told us that Manel was coming and that he wasn't going to give us a lecture I taught that it was a joke. I couldn't imagine that what we were going to do with colour pencils, dinosaurs and plasticine would make us realise such amount of things without anybody telling them in an explicit way.

 When we arrived into the class we were expectant because the truth is that maybe none of us knew what we were going to do. It was like a new game that we had not played before. Manel showed us a short presentation and we were amazed when we saw what some children can do. Then we started the work. We had to make a comic, a story and an sop motion with dinosaurs. Manel lend an iPad to each group and we were supposed to work using it. Well, here the first problem, how to use an iPad? Not very difficult but If you know almost nothing about it, you can spend easily a few hours trying to understand how it works. At the end we saw that it was easier to use than what we taught at the beginning. We had an hour for doing the comic and the story but we spent almost 40 minutes trying to make the comic on the iPad. At this moment we diversified the work because we were not going to finish on time. We weren't working in the right way and we changed the roles. This worked because we had everything finished two hours later, including the photos for the stop motion.

 After this day of working with dinosaurs we have been talking in class about the experience. For me it has been something totally new, I had never done something similar. I think we learned a lot of things because we weren't bored and the time flew. If every class was interesting, everybody would learn much more than what they learn now. I learned more in those four hours than I would have learned on those same hours but with another subject.

 Thanks to Manel we have experienced that a different kind of education could be more meaningful. Now I have changed the way I saw education and innovation. I want to be a good teacher that thinks about what is important for his pupils to learn and that makes them realise that learning is not boring because It is the most interesting thing in the world.

CULTURAL AGENDA

We have already finished our weekly task but we are working very hard in other subjects. As I have to act as facilitator, I have prepared a cultural agenda for each of my girls to encourage them to finish all the tasks before the weekend for enjoying with some of the performances. I am sure they will find something interesting.




Best wishes

Stop motion

And our humble stop motion is this:

Una mañana de dinosaurios con Manel

What have we learnt today?

Well, today has been a really interesting day. I think we have learnt a lot of things and we have learnt them the way children do in the classes of Manel. This” not very usual teacher” has a not very usual way (unfortunately) of understanding teaching. I think he really loves what he does and his main objective is that children learn in a way that will allow them to incorporate everything they learn to their lives. They will learn by doing things, being their own teachers, as they have to look for the information, process it and after that, they learn it and they teach each other. All this way to do things in class implies a big amount of work and planning by the teacher. It is not the easiest way to teach, but it is the most rewarding, as children really like and enjoy their learning, what makes this learning more lasting and meaningful. They also, as Manel says, show their interest and let you know by means of their immediate implication in their work or task. That interest in doing, working, learning is what every teacher would like to receive from his/her pupils , but teachers don´t receive what they don´t give. It takes a big amount of work to carry this kind of projects out and it is not easy to face the reaction of parents and colleges, because this way of doing things is not the “formal” way in which it has always been done.

On the other hand, as the morning has been long, we have learnt just a very little part of what we can do with an iPad. It is really wonderful! You can do an innumerable amount of things with this ”object”. It gives you new possibilities to experiment with children, to do new things, to create your own stories and to make possible that history is not so boring. This comic is one of the tasks we have done today and it has been really funny.

In addition, we have learnt that we must administrate our time and organize our group in order to be efficient and get our objectives in the time we have to do our tasks.

Creative work

 

Our third activity in #SOyER12 was how to be more creative and how to teach it to the children. It was developed with the collaboration of Manel Rives, primary teacher, who taught us the dynamic of his classes and the results of children’s works, using several tools, but the most important were the autonomy and the creativity. He is  working with new technologies, teaching the students to make visual projects in a public school near Santiago.

He doesn´t use teacher’s book, but another tools such as powerful and easy for using by the kids software. The obligatory point of departure is historical mental map. They must search information, create information and learn the information. They have to collaborate, plan, discuss, and find the appropriate place for the activity. Children must be creative, responsible and enterprising.  And the teacher must convince the parents that his method is at least as good as the other methods, and he must sacrifice part of his free time, because this kind of methodology absorbs more time and work than the normal book method, where the teacher is the master of the universe, and he knows everything.

Actually, our activity includes three tasks:Create a comic, write a tale and do a stop motion. For this tasks we were more than ever, we have the help of Angela Clemente y Paloma Andugar. Linda, Manel and other teachers helped to the other groups. 

Using the iPad that brings Manel, and dinosaurs, crayons, plasticine, camera and laptop, we had to be creative. It was like the TV game “Do you know more than a child of primary school?” We have little time to do the tasks, so we divide the work, therefore all members of the group have something different to do. Ana, Paloma A. and Angela were working on the tale, while Pilar, Paloma, laura and I were working on the comic. When we finished the comic, we change the roles: Pilar y Paloma create the characters of the tale in the iPad, and Ana, Laura, Paloma A. and I, made the stop motion. Finally the entire group record the voices and the movement of the tale’ characters. Taking into account that, we aren’t as creative as children and we had little time, the results, were pretty good.

For the record that we have participated in the classroom practice, rather than sign a list, we took photo with Manel.

Primary education is not only painting and cutting, but it's part of it. The main goal is to try to be at least as creative as children and promote their knowledge, creativity and intelegence. The assignment doesn't metter if there is no learning.

Hello world!

Here we are and yes we can!
We are five students of the University of Murcia. And this is the blog for School Organization and Educational Resources subject in which we will write interesting things that we learn. Our names are:

Dinka Zheleva Cherkezova
María del Pilar Lasheras Velasco
Paloma López Ciller
Ana María González Herrero
Laura Rodríguez Ortín

We hope you enjoy!