sábado, 29 de octubre de 2016

Aulas felices

Aulas felices

Here I explain three activities that can be done with secondary education students. I have taken them from an article called Aulas felices. I have chosen these activities because I think they are simple, entertaining and students can be interested in them; also because they can be beneficial for the students because these activities develop critical thinking, they foster creativity and they can be relaxing or motivating. These are the activities:
  • Breathing at the begnning of the class: before starting with the lesson, devote 3 minutes to a simple breathing exercise. Ask students to close their eyes and breathe deeply as many times as you consider. Better if they think about a nice place (the beach,the moutain,a city they have visited...). The aim of this exercise is to relax, forget for a moment about problems and start the class with energy. This activity is very useful in exam period.
  • Create and use a haiku to live more "awake": first ask students if they know what a haiku is, explain the concept of haiku to them and then, ask them to write one in the lines of this example "me comprometo/a vivir el presente/conscientemente". This is a motivating activity, students can write something that helps them to keep working hard. They can have the haiku in their study place.
  • Publicity and counterpublicity: Teenagers are very ineterested in publicity, they are potential customers for many brands and they are the targets of many publicity campaigns. First, ask them if they remember any advert they like, why they like that advert, what do they think are the features of a good advert; ask them about ear-worms (catchy melodies that help customers to remember the product), comment about bad or inapropiate adverts. Always use examples to illustrate what you mean by ear-worm, good/bad advert. Finally, in groups, ask them to design an advert as they would like to see on TV or in a magazine. And, if they want to, they can film/record/illustrate it.