The other day in class we were talking about fairy tale characters.
The structure of the class was as follows:
Warming-up
Our teacher Raquel asked us to think about our favourite fairy tale
character and we have to discuss it in pairs. After some minutes she asked us
to share our character with the rest of the class. A lot of characters came up
as for example Pocahontas, Tinker Bell, Aladin’s Genius… as you can see they
are not fairy tale characters but Disney characters. However, our teacher let
us work with them.
The problem in my case was not remembering any tale apart from ‘Little
red riding hood’, for this reason here you have some web pages that I found
where you can find old and new tales for children.
Tales in Spanish: here
Tales in English: here
List of fairy tales according with its region: wikipedia
Theoretical part
After the warming-up, Raquel gave us a worksheet where there was a
table with different characters motifs and its description. Here you can see
the table. It has been adapted from here.
We had to fill the table with characters we knew that met the
description given.
The activity
Now is our turn. We have to create a fairy tale character and for doing
it here we have a new resource that I have loved: TRADING CARDS
It is a web resource for creating a kind of identity card for fictional
or real characters among others. Here you can see how it works:
As you can see, the card is divided into some blocks as description of
the character, insights, development, his interactions in the world and the
last block ask the author to express his personal connection with the new born
character.
Time to reflect
I think this activity is great not only as a resource for teacher but
also for the students work.
For teachers, it gives many possibilities to work with them. For
instance, some activities come to my mind as the followings:
- Creating a character based on the students or even an antagonist helping them to reflect on their own characteristics
- Creating in small groups a short story with original characters
- In groups, each of them can create a character and create an improvised story with the characters of the other groups.
For students, trading cards make the job of creating characters easier
allowing the creation of a rich character. The cards offer the possibility of
covering some important aspect that must be taken into account if students want
a character with a deep personality. Also, it makes easier for the student to
think about the way a character can act in a story since all his thoughts,
feelings and goals has been developed in the card.
Time for questions…
What do you think about the idea of Trading Cards? Can you see them
useful? Can you think about more activities to work with them?
What a great work, Cristina! Good analysis of the lesson, and great ideas to keep on working with the techniques, materials and resources used! I'm looking forward to reading your next post! This is worth the Wall of Fame!
ResponderEliminarHello Cristinius!!
ResponderEliminarFirst of all I want to congratulate you for such a nice post about Trading Cards.
In response to your question I think that is a great idea to create your own trading card, and for the students, they will have a better view of their own fairy tale characters: how do they behave, if the characters are related to the creator, you get to think more in the adjectives that describes people, things...it is a good idea. I see trading cards useful for what I said above.
An activity could be analyzing real people. For example: their family, friends, themselves... It is a better way for children to gain a deeper understanding of the elements that make up a fully developed character.
Last year, I didn't know what was a Trading Card Creator but with my students, we prepared a story, where they had to build up an imaginary story, and then create the main characters with cardboards and sticks. After that we created a story and each of the students represented their own characters. I have created a trailer. When I complete my trading card post I will upload the trailer for you to see.
Have a nice day, and don't forget to smile.
Hello Cristina!
ResponderEliminarI like so much your post, I agree with your opinion about the trading card.
From my view, it is a fantastic source for students, because they can develop their imagination creating fiction characters who involve them in amazing adventures and stories.
They can work the trading card of an individual or groupal way sharing ideas and opinions with partners.
Also, we can do different variations of the topic, such as giving them the image of a character to introduce him in a story created for children.
The innovation is essential!
Congratulations for your job!!