ACTIVITIES FROM AULAS FELICES

In this post I will present 3 activities from the book "Aulas Felices" that I consider could ease my future lessons:

I DON’T KNOW

LEVELS: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Facing the fear towards not manageable situations.

DEVELOPMENT: With this activity, students need to realise and recognise that there are always some things that we are not aware of and there is no problem about saying “I don’t know”. In the activity some questions are asked to each one of the learners, alternating the level of difficulty so that each of them is able to answer at least an easy question and a difficult question saying “I don’t know”. This task can also be made in small groups, giving the activity the aspect of a contest so that it becomes more motivating for students.

It is important to emphasise the idea that we don’t have to be afraid of not knowing something and we should show it in a natural way, given the fact that even the wisest adults don’t know everything. The important thing is to own the wish and curiosity to learn from what we don’t know.

TIME: Among 10 and 20 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS: As adult teachers, it is convenient to take into account the classmates’ attitude.

COUNCIL OF SAGES

LEVELS: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Trying to give some advice to others in order to help them to overcome difficult situations.

DEVELOPMENT: In school and in daily life some conflicts may arise and they need to be addressed. These conflicts could be taken as examples in order to deal with this activity. We have to ask students to think and write about a conflict that has happened to them or to a person they know. After giving them some time to write it, we will ask one student to read it out loud and the rest of the class will focus on the problem and once it is understood, they will have to think and write in a card a piece of advice for this person. After that, we will gather all the members of the class who will form “The Council of Sages”. This council will have to read all the advice, move away the ones that are repeated and give the person with the problem the ones that might be useful for him or her in order to confront the conflict.

This process will be repeated with the conflicts shared by other classmates.

RESOURCES: Cards to write the advice

TIME: One or more than one session taking an hour.

ADVERTISING AND COUNTER-ADVERTISING

LEVEL: Primary and Secondary Education

AIMS: Critical analysis of advertisements. Developing creative strategies to elaborate advertisements with positive aspects.

DEVELOPMENT: Advertising is a topic that appears in different subjects both in Primary and Secondary Education. We can take advantage of this aspect by introducing critical reflection and analysis of the world of advertising and the media in the classroom.

We will ask students to select and bring to class some advertisements with negative connotations: sexist connotations using women as a seduction strategy, adverts that don’t take into account the respect for the environment, advertisements showing products that have been made by exploited workers or children from underdeveloped countries, adverts that stimulate the consumption of damaging products (tobacco, alcohol, junk food…). We can pick several representative advertisements, if possible the ones coming from different storage medium (newspaper, TV, radio, hoarding, etc.), and analyse their characteristics: the language they use, the characteristics of the pictures or sounds that are shown, the aims that are behind them, etc.

After doing the analysis, the creative activity will consist of designing a positive replica (a counter-advertisement) for each advertisement showing a negative feature. This new advert has to show texts, pictures or sounds that offer a different message to encourage positive attitudes and actions such as an image presenting equal roles among men and women, a responsible consumption that is respectful with the environment, a complaint against the oppressive situation that millions of workers and children from underdeveloped countries are suffering, etc.

The result could be represented in different formats: texts with images, audio-visual montages in PowerPoint or in video, a sound recording taking the style of a radio advert, etc.

RESOURCES: Advertisements collected by the students and the teacher. They can come from newspapers, magazines, TV or radio recordings, photos from hoardings or from the Internet, etc.

OBSERVATIONS: This activity is ideal to be made in groups where all students can give their creative ideas. What is more, this task can be useful to develop the students’ open-mindedness as well as their critical thinking and judgement.